Updated: Narrowed in on issue and rephrased question.
I have two users who recently (last week or so) started having problems working on files on a network drive. Specifically opening, or copying the file locally. Both actions fail frequently while on the VPN, but work fine in the office. Nothing else is affected that I am observing. It is not a permissions issue. They have full permissions and this setup has been working for a long time (till now).
The files are small, 1-3MB even. I cannot reproduce this, except on one of the users machines, if I remote to it while they are on the VPN. Sure enough, it fails consistently, but occasionally works, when on VPN. I verified connectivity isn't an issue, by serving a large file via HTTPS on Apache on SERVER-A with no issues…but anything with the window fileshare and it croaks and times out with an error.
Error message #1 (in case of copying in windows explorer):
Network Error
There is a problem accessing …….
Make sure you are connected to the network and try again.
Error message #2 ( in the case of trying to open a powerpoint):
Microsoft Office Powerpoint
The path or file name for … is invalid. Please check that the path and file name are correct.
At no time does VPN drop, and browsing of the fileshare is maintained…yet it's acting like the network share is dropping. I can maintain data transfer w/ that server (HTTPS) throughout while I get one of these error messages to occur. It seems like a network issue, but the only sign is failure to open or copy files from a fileshare.
Fileshares on other machines (from problem laptop on VPN) are not affected, which is strange. Now, it'd be great to just move everything somewhere and call it a day…but there are extensive sets of linked documents among these powerpoints and excel docs, so it's actually a major pain to move the documents to another location (and back, when fixed…)
I am going to investigate "auto-tuning" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934430) in the morning, but I am currently stumped. If it was that I would expect it to fail on other network shares…
Environment:
- Fileserver: SERVER-A, Windows Server 2003 R2
- User machines: Windows 7 Professional
- VPN server: SERVER-B, Windows Server 2003, PPTP using RRAS.
Best Answer
I agree with driftpeasant, make sure users have modify permission on the folder, better still make sure they have full permissions....
I'd definitely check that the files are not in use elsewhere (perhaps backup software is accessing the file at the time). Check on the server to see if the files is/are open.
Also a good idea to copy the file from the server share to the local PC and see if they can open them from there.
Let us know.