My SP3 cant' find any other PC's on my local network after SP3 crashed

[Maciek]

Hi all,

I hope you can help me with this.

Last night my SP3 just froze, as it does sometimes, and I had to reboot it. After it started it gave me a number of options to "refresh" my SP3 and its OS. (I don't like that word "refresh" btw )

I didn't choose anything, I just rebooted SP3 again and it started fine, but it is now unable to find any other servers on my local network.

All basic settings are correct as far as I'm concerned, but obviously something has gone really wrong.

If anyone has got any ideas please let me know as it [Windows 8.1] is now getting on my nerves...

Thanks in advance.

 

[GreyFox7]

Is it only the local network you cannot see but Internet access if fine? Probably an issue with Homegroup
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/...-finish=windows-81&v1h=win81tab1&v2h=win7tab1

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/homegroup-problems-in-windows

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/why-cant-i-access-my-homegroup

If all network access is out, check your Network Adapter in Device Manager. Try removing it and it should redetect and reinstall the driver.

 

[Maciek]

Yes it's only the local network or sharing if you will. I can access the internet and the SP3 is even visible on other machines, but wasn't accessible.

Anyway, I tried the system restore, and that didn't work, but I kept trying with other "refreshing" options, but I didn't want to reset anything. So when I cancelled the screen-with-refresh-options, the SP3 rebooted and all of a sudden everything is back to normal...

All previously mapped drives are working again. Could this be because I used my SP3 at work (using my iPhone as a 4G hotspot) just before it happened?

Another thing, do you also experience this weird behaviour when your machine starts up and you get a pop up window saying that your network drives could not be mapped... and then they are actually mapped and working fine, but still with red cross.. WTF?

I have 3 Windows 7 x64 Ult machines, one SP3 with Windows 8.1 and even my iPhone's root sharing enabled running at home. All usually works just fine, but I always get that "error mapping network drive" every time all my Windows are started. Despite the error I can access all network drives.

 

[New2ToMe]

the SP3 rebooted and all of a sudden everything is back to normal.

If , during a boot windows finds something amiss in the registry, it will use a previous version and that's probably what happened. It does not announce it is using an older version, but copies are saved regularly. That's been a "feature" since about win98+

starts up and you get a pop up window saying that your network drives could not be mapped.

Yup, well known issue and been ignored by msoft for years. A couple of workarounds, my favorite is a batch file on the desktop. I only have two icons on my desktops (on 3 PCs) and one of those is the batch file, the other the recycle bin. .

The problem happens as the "Reconnect at Boot" is only tested once during boot up and if the Network is not fully ready, windows assumes there is nothing to connect to. {sigh} Gotta love msoft programmers. DUH!

Open a Text editor, Notebook is good and enter the following, using the drive letter that is mapped where mine is drive "M:"

Explorer M:
timeout 9
TaskKill /im explorer.exe
Exit

Save it to the Desktop as
DamnNetwork.bat

After the PC has booted up and is stable at the desktop, double-click the DamnedNetwork and let it run. A Cmd window will pop up and then close. Then, run the File Explorer and there should be no red-cross for the mapped drive.

The other alternative that I have had mixed success with is a registry tweak.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache
Create a new DWORD named
SilentForcedAutoReconnect
Set it's value to 1