Solo logons fail when the machine doesn't have a network connection

Question

Why do I get a logon failure, saying the users home area cannot be found, when I logon locally and only when the computer is disconnected from the network?

Symptoms

A Problem has occurred and your Network home directory is not available. This maybe because the network file server is offline.

The users home folder share cannot be reached

Cause

In Windows 2000/XP the computer is able to detect whether it is connected to a network or is stand alone. When the computer is in stand alone mode UNC paths become invalid. This by itself is not a problem however Ranger Account Manager creates users with a UNC path for their home area.

This means as soon as the computer is disconnected from the network the users home area path becomes invalid and the home drive can no longer be mapped.

Resolution

There are two possible solutions. The first one requires you to modify the users account to connect to the local folder instead of a share. The second disables Windows ability from detecting if it is on or off the network. We disable this media sense but also set it to always on so UNC's are always valid.

Instructions

Option 1 - Modify the user account

1. Load Up Ranger Account Manager
2. Select the modify user option
3. Find the user in question and press next
4. You will see the users home folder will be pointing to something along the lines of laptopuser1
5. Edit this so that it points to the local machine folder e.g.
   c:\program files\ranger\userhome\username
6. Now press next until you get to finish were it will save the changes

This will allow your user to log on to the laptop regardless of the network connection status.

Option 2 - Modify the Computers Media Sense for UNC Paths

1. You need to download this registry file UNCMediaOff.reg
2. Then you need to run this registry file on the machines that you are seeing the problems on.

If you need more information about Option 2 and the side effects go to the Microsoft article below:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scidkb;EN-US;q239924

Testing

To test either option has worked, you need to boot the machine up without a network connection (i.e. if you have wireless make sure its disabled). Then you need to try to log on locally as the user in question. If this is successful then you have resolved the problem.