Network drive has become local drive

[EddieVenus]

I had mapped a network drive we will call it N: over a VPN, this all worked fine for a long time. Then after having moved and waited for a new broadband connection for a week or so, I went to access this network drive over the VPN tunnel just like before, only now that drive (N is local! It is represented by windows as a local drive, and when I click on it, it tells me that there is no disk! Even more strange is that it is not listed under removeable drives, but under fixed disks, and that it does not show up in some apps, like Partition Magic or Ghost. Win XP is telling me that the drive I had mapped to a remote machine is now local, but that it is not acctually here, or that there is nothing on it. Can anyone help me? I want to get rid of it, I need that drive letter, as that is the company's naming convention, it makes all the shortcuts work locally, and over the VPN. Thank you.

Eddie

p.s. at some point i recall XP asking to syncronize that drive, I just synced 1 folder, but I though I would mention it.

 

[jpm121]

From the start menu, right click on My Computer, and click Manage. Select Disk Management, and see what's listed there for the drive. If it shows as a physical drive, you have an extremely hosed situation, and will need to take further steps to fix (I haven't run across this one before!)

You can delete the drive definition from this screen (after making absolutely sure it's REALLY the mapped drive) and recreate it through normal (networking) means. Hope this helps...

Good luck

 

[EddieVenus]

Thank you jpm this was helpful in determining that it does not show up as a physical drive here, but it does not show up any place in Disk Management. I cannot seem to remove it from this screen. And I still see it in Explorer, and still cannot remove it from explorer.

 

[Dollar]

Have you check the Network Connections area. It may still reflect in there as a networked drive. Remove it from this area and see if that works.

Hope this helps.

 

[EddieVenus]

It does not appear in the Network Connections area. It does not show up in the Network Places area either. The only place it still appears is in explorer under Hard Disk Drives, as opposed to where it used to be in the Network Drives area. This is puzzling me more and more. Every thing I have tried to make this go away does no good. Although I do apprecicate the ideas, as so far they have both been in new directions as to what others had suggested. I will keep you updated as I keep trying out new ideas.

 

[Pipeline2k]

Give this a try Eddie and GL

http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q308582

 

[wolluf]

Have you tried mapping something else to N: (just to see if you can) - either from explorer or using net use command?
If this no good, you could try the SUBST command to see if that will let you either delete the N: drive or again map a folder to N:.

 

[gdvissch]

have you tried "subst" in a command box?
Sometimes a mapped drive becomes a substituted drive for some reason. If it shows up you can remove it with "subst N: /d"

 

[EddieVenus]

Ok I am working on this subst command thing, but I have tried to remove it as a network drive, but it tells me it is not found as a network drive. It shows up as a standard drive. I also removed it with XP powertools, but that only removed the letter from being accesable, I thought it might catch on when I reinstated the letter that winXP might realize that there is no drive there. Oh well. I will keep trying, and I still thank everone for their ideas, this is baffeling a whole room of IT/IS guys now. How fun windows can be.

 

[EddieVenus]

I played around with that subst command, and though cool in its own right, it was not the culprate. It is not substituting for any path either. Oh well. I am going to try to follow the syncronize thing and see where that takes me. If anyone knows more about the sync options and might be able to fill me in on what may have happend there I would be much obliged. Thank you.

 

[Dollar]

Here's a thought!! Did you make any of the files on the previously mapped drive available offline...could be that XP will retain offline info in this manner even though the drive no longer exists. So just a guess, but would XP keep that drive available in order to convince itself of offline files/folders that were originally from that drive. (Don't know myself, but worth a shot I guess...if it's got a whole room of IT/IS guys going anyway)

Certainly hope this helps.

 

[EddieVenus]

Well as a matter of fact Dollar it did make some files available offline, one folder with contents. And that was one of the questions I had too, was whether or not it is keeping this drive for those files. So I went and disabled offline files, then deleted all the offline content, and checked back only to see that the drive is still there. Good news is that I did not know what I was doing, so I cannot rule that out as a possibility, as a matter of fact some of the other people I have asked had the same comment, and yet none have ever seen this actually happen. Back to the drawing board.

 

[Shaith]

From a command prompt (start/run, cmd, enter), try

net use n: /del

This will get rid of any persistent mapping, but you need to disable offline content caching first. Once you have the drive deleted, re-map it and it should clear up the problems.

 

[EddieVenus]

OK it sounds like everyone here knows more about this than I did, but you can all use your skills on more pressing problems now, because this litle mystery cleared itself up. Yep, I was having other issues and had rebooted to safe mode several times to work on other problems, one time, possibly after having to edit a registry entry, I came back and checked the windows explorer and to my delight the drive was no longer present. Just to make sure I mapped to it, and removed it just fine. SO unfortunatly I have no idea how I got rid of it. Nothing I did should have affected explorer, drive lettering, or any other windows related thing. But it did, and I will attempt to look back on it to find out what it was. Thank all of you who contributed to this little problem you were alot of help.