Novell 4.11 unable to access drives

[TheITnewbie]

Hi all hope you can help

Here is the problem
I have a problem where two of my users after an undetermined amount of time are unable to access a drive on the network.

For example:
I log on to my pc first thing in the morning log into novell and my desktop loads up just fine. I go to one of my apps (lets say excel) open a doc from the "g" drive it loads up no problem I do a few edits then click to save back to my "g" drive. Now sometimes it dose so no problems at all but other times I get an error that the drive dose not exsist and after that I cant access any of the network drives at all its almost like Novell stoped working or timed its self out of the network. Sometimes this happens after only a few minutes and sometime it can happen after a few hours. And this is not just in excel I can try to access the drive through windows explorer and get the same message. Any ideas out how I can fix this permanently because its driveing me and the users nuts!

 

[terry712]

sounds more pc than netware server

 

[marvhuffaker]

This could be a configuration on your client. Make sure you have the newest Novell client, then look into the "Bad Address Cache" or something like that. Some other problem on your network may be causing the server to 'appear' to be down, so the client drops the connection. You can 'fudge' the client to ignore these conditions, but you really need to get to the root of the problem - check your switches for packet errors, make sure you don't have a server/switch speed/duplex mismatch, etc.

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[TheITnewbie]

Ok thanks guys for the help I thought it might be more PC related than netware but it only happens to this one group of users out of the whole floor (There are about 50 users on this floor and only 2 of them seem to have the problem with the client droping everyone else in the department dose not have it.) Also these pc's are running Windows 2000 NT is there a knownen problem with Netware 4.11 and this version of windows?

 

[TheLad]

I presume you mean Windows 2000 (not Windows NT)? As long as the OS is configured correctly with IPX, there should be no issues apart from checking the settings and network connections mentioned previously

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"Insert funny comment in here!"
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[TheITnewbie]

Ah you would be correct on that sorry it's early and the morning java hasn't kicked in I will keep you guys posted if the problem is solved or not.

 

[TheITnewbie]

Well no luck at all guys I'm completly stuck now the client was on version 4.81 and we upgraded that but still dose the same thing. Now I was wondering could it be a becasue the station hasnt had a its Win 2000 update ran on it in sometime maybe there is some conflict with it?

 

[FredWagner]

Make sure the network cable from the NIC to the jack isn't wound or wrapped around a metal furniture leg! I had a situation where one user in a department had terrible LAN connectivity, and it turned out that when the 'in house help' ran new LAN wires, they didn't cut off the end before putting the RJ-45 jack on it, they put the extra 30 feet + of cable into a 'hank, and bent that around a steel partition leg, and secured it with cable ties. Made an Iron-Core inductor on their Cat-5 cable. Cutting off the excess cable, and terminating it properly, solved the problem. Look UNDER the desk too!

Fred Wagner