Windows XP SP3 -

Speratically the network resources will no longer be available. What I mean is the employee will be working away at an Excel, Word document or on the internet and the next thing they know Outlook will not respond, Mapped network drives will not respond. I double click my computer and it will not respond.

Things checked during network failure:
1. NIC link lights look normal.
2. Network connectivity icon on the taskbar looks connected.
3. Internet explorer works great during interuption.
4. Drivers have been updated.
5. If I do a Start/Run \\server\share I connect instantly to the drives that are mapped. If I double click on the mapped drive in my computer "no response".

Things I know that fix it.
1. Log off and back on.
2. Unplug network cable and plug back in.
3. Reboot

I'm convinced it is network related but don't know how to pin point it.

Any thoughts?

Is it a windows share they are accessing...?
samba?/ftp?

Check the Windows Event Viewer. Sounds like possibly an issue with Group Policy or loss of connection to the Active Directory/DC (assuming this computer is connected to a Windows domain and not a Workgroup).

Yes it is a windows share. Not sure if it's samba or ftp. Sorry.

I will check the event viewer.
It is connected to a domain.

I had a similar situation and found it was a computer that had a bad LAN port. The computer was loading the network with garbage and making a denial of service situation. There are a couple of free network analysis programs available. Wall is one. It will tell you, almost exactly, where the problem is. What version of Windows Server is your server running? 2008 R2 has a network diagnostic built into it to ferret out these kinds of problems.

Rcaman

I suspect its a bad LAN port, if integrated w/in the motherboard you may have a power supply issue.

Do this.

ping a local network device and let it run as long as you are accessing the PC and other network resources. When you lose connectivity check to see if you are still getting a reply; this will help you where to begin.

ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -t

Where xxx is the GW address.

Thanks for all the help.

Rcaman - I will try "Wall". We are on Server 2008 but I'm not sure of the revision.

The strange thing is one computer started having these symptoms so I replaced the PC thinking it was a bad NIC on the PC. The replacement works great. Then a different PC started having the same types of symptoms, I replaced it and all is good. Now I'm on my third PC with similar symptoms. Thats why I'm convinced its network related.

Well, I'm still battling this issue.

1. Its not a bad NIC
2. It's not a bad switch
3. It's not a bad cable
4. There's nothing abnormal in the Event Viewer.

This is happening on XP machines and Windows 2000 Pro PC's. I have three PC's acting up at this point.

1. I have disconnected the mapped network drives and re-mapped them.
2. I have changed the names of the computer because I read a duplicate computer name could cause this issue.
3. I can ping the DNS repeatedly (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -t) when this happens and it never times out.
4. If I use the UNC path during a spell it connects every time.

It's very strange. Network resources could disconnect randomly every 5 minutes or once every 1.5 days. No consistency.

Got your message.

Are you connecting to a Server or is this a peer to peer setup?

Since this is occuring on mulitple machines, Whats the common source? the Host machine?

You may have a flakey DNS issue. Make sure Netbios over TCPip is enabled. Also, map to IP address in lieu of "name".

Connecting to a Windows Server 2008. There is no commonality to it. Only the symptoms are the same on three machines. I agree with you about the flakey DNS issue. I don't know enough about the server end to prove its a DNS issue.

If your nic cards both server and workstations (but check the server first) have the IEEE option or if your switches are managed and have the same option...turn it off!

Well, I believe this was a nasty virus. Multiple scans did not catch it though. Since the machines have been replaced. The issue has been resolved. We need to seriously look at better corporate virus protection. PETA....

Thanks for the suggestions.