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My girlfriend uses a network share at work, i.e. while physically present in the office with her laptop, or from home using a VPN connection. She uses Windows 10 Home (19041.610) and has added a network drive (Z:) from Windows Explorer.

Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of issues when she's not connected to the VPN, I'm wondering if it's a bug in the new Windows 10 version. Basically, the Explorer just hangs indefinitely. You'd think there should be some sort of timeout, but apparently there isn't. So for example, when she opens the "Save As" dialog from Word, Word just immediately freezes forever. She has waited for an hour and nothing changed. The "net use" command also hangs. When she clicks the "Add attachment" button in Outlook, Outlook freezes. Etc.

The only way I was able to fix this was to disable the Workstation service (it couldn't even be stopped), reboot. Enable and start the Workstation service. Delete the network drive. Then everything would work again, but of course then she couldn't use the network drive anymore. I added it back and the issues reappeared, too.

I have googled and found that there are lots of settings for this. For example discussed here: How do I set the Windows network timeout for physically disconnected mapped drive?

But I'm not sure which one would be relevant here. It would be nice if the Z: drive was always visible in Windows Explorer (disconnected, even after a reboot), and if she could simply connect to the VPN when she needs to access it, without it otherwise having any influence on the system.

TravelingFox
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  • One way (I use this, so very simple-minded) is to make a batch file to connect the drive and have a batch file to disconnect the drive. User needs to be in control. There are logoff scripts that work in Windows Pro if you wish to upgrade. – John Nov 01 '20 at 13:48
  • @John Thanks, that's a good idea. But what if she forgets to run the disconnection script? Also I think there surely must be some way to do this without any scripting? It shouldn't be too difficult for Windows to figure out that the network share isn't available? It can't just freeze the filesystem forever... – TravelingFox Nov 01 '20 at 14:59
  • I have a shut down batch file in the Windows Group Policy Script folder that can be set up with GPEDIT. That would great when I forget. But you need Windows Pro for this – John Nov 01 '20 at 15:07
  • Also, depending on your VPN client, you can map and un-map folders in the VPN client. NCP Secure Entry IPSec application can do this. – John Nov 01 '20 at 15:15
  • I’m not really looking for a script. I have never had any issues with disconnected network drives showing in my Windows Explorer, so I don’t understand why this is causing such issues on her system. You’d think there would be some timeouts that would allow Windows to figure out that the share isn’t available and not lock the whole file system? – TravelingFox Nov 02 '20 at 16:30

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