Home drive is no longer mapped - machine restarts

Question

Occasionally during logon, machines report an error saying "Your home drive is no longer mapped " and close down. Why?

Symptoms

N/A

Cause

There is a security check built into Ranger designed to ensure users cannot disconnect their home drive whilst logged on (and thus gain access to local drives when Ranger can no longer change to the correct default open/save path in file dialogs).

If the "H:" (or other home drive) is unavailable for a period of more than a few seconds, Ranger will display a message reporting the problem and shut the machine down.

Resolution

Check:

Server load during logon. Do you have one or more domain controllers? How many machines are in use across the network. Usually networks of over 60 machines need additional backup domain controllers to correctly service logons and balance network load.

Check you use a "net use h: /home" type command in your login script to map the user's home directory correctly. Is the drive being disconnected or used intensively during the logon process? If this line does not exist, then Ranger will map the necessary drive.

Are there any other intensive processes starting during logon (like server based virus checkers and other programs) that may take a while to start and hence cause the machine to slow down during logon?

Does the user have a share and a home directory? If Ranger is unable to find or map a drive to the user's home directory this error will occur.