Frequent error messages when connecting to Windows file shares from a Mac under a VPN connection

file-sharingmac-osxvpnwindows-server-2003

I have a straightforward Windows Domain setup with about 15 Windows desktops and 5 Macs (all on site, local network) happily connecting to some file shares on our file server.

I'm having problems with with one off-site Mac OSX 10.3 that uses a VPN to our Windows provided VPN server to connect to the office and map the fileshare. Frequently, when accessing files on the file share this user will get one or two errors:

"The operation cannot be completed because one or more required items cannot be found. (Error code -1401)"

"The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "home1-final.psd" could not be written. (Error code -36)"

  1. This user has been accessing files this way without problems for over a year
  2. No configuration changes or installations have occurred on the file server of the client/user Mac since the problem began
  3. The user can use the files most of the time, but frequently gets these errors.

This is under Windows Server 2003 and Mac OS X 10.50.8.

Any ideas?

Best Answer

What version of Windows are you running on the file server? 10.3 is pretty ancient and its version of Samba is even older. There could be any numbers of incompatibilities especially if you're keeping up on Windows patches.

Have you checked the VPN logs to see if the user isn't seeing a dropped connection during the times the error is encountered? Flaky connections often exhibit errors similar to what you're seeing.

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