GPO Mapped Drive Issues on Windows 10 Clients

group-policywindows 10

We are running Windows SBS 2011 as our file server and AD, a 2008 R2 server that is sharing files, and a 2012 R2 terminal server. I have a GPO that maps network drives to users based on security roles in AD. Most of the drives are mapping shares on the SBS2011, but one is mapping a share on the 2008R2. They have always worked fine when everyone was on Windows 7. We recently upgraded (almost) all workstations to Windows 10 v1511.

On a few of the workstations we are experiencing issues with the mapped drives. Issues include:

  1. On startup all drives from the SBS2011 are shown but all have a red X. Simply opening the drive reconnects it and it works fine. Drive from 2008R2 is fine.
  2. On startup all drives from the SBS2011 are shown but all have a red X. Trying to open the drive gives an error. Drive from 2008R2 is fine.
  3. While the machine has been running for a while and the user has a document open from one of the SBS2011 drives (Word Doc, Adobe InDesign Doc, etc.) or is running an app from the SBS2011 drives, the drive drops connection and the open program (Word, Indesign, etc.) or network app crashes. The Drive from 2008R2 does not have issues.

To add confusion:

  1. The above issues occur only on 3 machines (so far) out of 18.
  2. They do not happen consistently; a machine that has these issues one day may be fine for a couple of days and then have more issues.
  3. That single mapped drive on the 2008r2 NEVER has issues. Even when all of the other drives are experiencing the issues above, this drive always works. So it also appears to only be the shares from the SBS2011 server.
  4. The user does not experience these issues when using the 2012r2 terminal server. All drives work properly.

The GPOs that I'm using to map network drives are set to "Replace", "Reconnect" is enabled, each on is assigned a specific drive letter (not "Use First Available"). I had read a suggestion that I should disable the "Reconnect" option, and that is what I will try next, but the reconnect option is enabled on that one drive that always works, so I don't think this is the issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Cheers!

Best Answer

I recently had a problem similar to this and ended up working with 3rd level Microsoft support. There was a conflict between the SMB driver and the AV software installed on the server. You can do what Microsoft told us to do (do not do this unless you know what you are doing and are willing to accept the risk) and uninstall your AV software on one workstation and the server (restart both) and see if the problem goes away. If it does change AV software or upgrade to the newest version of the current AV software.

If that does not fix the problem, you can change "Update" to "Replace" in the GPO. Replace will get rid of the existing mappings but Update just makes changes (no changes are made unless it is necessary).

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