2009-09-15

Windows 7 and network drive mounting

I've been testing Window 7 (now on RC1, Build 7100) for a few months now. So far I really like it, but there is one problem that is bugging me.

I just put it on one of my main machines. Actually, the one I'm typing on right now. And it is faster than Vista was. The upgrade process (without doing a clean install) went surprisingly smoothly. So I definitely like it. But...

I'm have all sorts of trouble with mapping network drives.

I store my music, pictures, older files, and other miscellaneous things on two 640 GB HDD that are attached to a Linksys NSLU2 NAS device.

Windows 7 usually won't connect to them, however. All I get is this:

When I double click on the drive to reconnect it, "My Computer" or "Windows Explorer" just hangs. And it won't connect.

I've been messing around with all sorts of network settings. I had some brief success earlier. I switched my network type from Home to Work. Then I turned off the Domain setting in the work profile. After a quick reboot, I had my network drives back.

I went away for a couple hours after syncing my iPod and they were gone again. Back to those sad looking drives with the big X.

And trying the same steps don't fix it.

Turning off the Windows firewall doesn't fix it.

What's weird is that I can reach the drives through the web utility for the NSLU2. I can see the data in there from this machine. I just can't map them.

I know it's an issue with this configuration. Another machine on the network (running XP) has no trouble seeing the drives, mapping them, and copying data.

And all the while I've been writing this, Windows is still trying to map that drive.

So I guess I've got a few more hours of trouble shooting ahead tomorrow.

Any suggestions?

Update: Well, the problem seems to have solved itself. Several days after that post, suddenly my mapped drives were back and working as well as ever. It's weird because it's not like another update to Windows came d0wn. The problem just seems to have healed, which worries me because it could some back. But it's fixed for now and I have no idea what I did.

4 comments:

DogsDeserveFreedom said...

Interesting ... we've been testing Windows 7 at home for a few months also but I haven't tried network drives. I'll have to fiddle around with them when I get home!


Definitely better than vista though...

Madong Arizona said...

More people using it, but I still love windows XP,

All the thing I need, I still can find it in XP

Hitesh Rawat said...

I also tested window's 7 on Virtual machine............its pretty smooth......\,,,/

dsaba67 said...

Same problem but I don't even see the two hdd attached to the nslu!
No problem with xp (I run xp and win7 on two different partitions of the same machine).
How can I fix the problem?