Mapped Drive problem

[Michael]

I have just worked out why my gameex pc is slow at booting into windows xp sometimes. Its because i have 5 mapped drives and when the server is turned off it waits for them (i think to timeout)

if i press [ESC] key it seems to cancel and continue loading windows

What im looking for is some way of making windows not wait for all 5 drives to loads or in this case fail

i have an idea that should speed the proccess up but i dont know how to do it

The idea...

Ping the server if it gets a reply then loads the mapped drives other wise it dosnt and jsut continues loading windows

any ideas for if anyone could point me in the right direction. I do know fairly basic visual basic programming just dont know how to check for a ping reply

might even be worth adding into a feature request if other people have the same problem

Thanks Michael

[TimmyB]

If you don't need to use those drives each time you log in I'd recommend not mapping them as drives, but rather access the resources with the UNC name (\\ServerName\ShareName). For convience you could add a shortcut to the folder to your desktop or start menu.

[Michael]

  TimmyB said:

If you don't need to use those drives each time you log in I'd recommend not mapping them as drives, but rather access the resources with the UNC name (\\ServerName\ShareName). For convience you could add a shortcut to the folder to your desktop or start menu.

i have a feeling gameex dosnt support UNC paths i may be wrong

also will gameex pick up if i map drives while gameex is running?

[bkenobi]

I don't know how well this would work or how to implement it, but perhaps what you want to do is run a script to check for the existence of those shares and map to them if they exist. When mapping the drive, map as a temporary drive rather than a "reconnect at login" drive. That way Windows won't check each time. I don't know how to map drives in AI/AHK/VBScript, but this should be pretty easy to find online since this is the type of thing network admins would want to do and they are usually the ones helping on those types of forums (e.g., www.experts-exchange.com, help forums at AI and AHK homepages).

Now I can't say that this will be any faster than just using the permanently mapped drive. You would probably have to write the script and time things. Alternately, just map the drives when they are actually needed OR do what I do and create a shortcut rather than a mapped drive. The drive is really just a convenience anyway, so using a shortcut from the desktop should be fine for most things. (EDIT: Just read that TimmyB suggested this part already)

[Michael]

  bkenobi said:

I don't know how well this would work or how to implement it, but perhaps what you want to do is run a script to check for the existence of those shares and map to them if they exist. When mapping the drive, map as a temporary drive rather than a "reconnect at login" drive. That way Windows won't check each time. I don't know how to map drives in AI/AHK/VBScript, but this should be pretty easy to find online since this is the type of thing network admins would want to do and they are usually the ones helping on those types of forums (e.g., www.experts-exchange.com, help forums at AI and AHK homepages).

Now I can't say that this will be any faster than just using the permanently mapped drive. You would probably have to write the script and time things. Alternately, just map the drives when they are actually needed OR do what I do and create a shortcut rather than a mapped drive. The drive is really just a convenience anyway, so using a shortcut from the desktop should be fine for most things. (EDIT: Just read that TimmyB suggested this part already)

It should be faster as there all on the same server so it should take 1/5 of the time (in theory) as im pritty sure windows waits for each of the 5 drives to timeout if it dosnt find the server.

I have been playing about in VB and as it stand i have made a program that displays a message box if it gets a ping reply from the server

[Nologic]

In WinXP...and in all likely hood all NT based OS's there is a reg tweak to disable mounting network drives at boot time...this will get you booted quickly...but you'll likely have to launch some hidden explorer sessions to those drives post boot to mount them...as I don't think NT mounts post boot automatically.

[Michael]

  Nologic said:

In WinXP...and in all likely hood all NT based OS's there is a reg tweak to disable mounting network drives at boot time...this will get you booted quickly...but you'll likely have to launch some hidden explorer sessions to those drives post boot to mount them...as I don't think NT mounts post boot automatically.

im now thinking just add a batch file into startup folder may do the trick

[Michael]

  Michael said:

im now thinking just add a batch file into startup folder may do the trick

after a bit of tweaking i managed to get it to map the drives via a batch file in startup

but when i shelled gameex it failed to work so it looks like its back to were i started

[gryhnd]

  Michael said:

after a bit of tweaking i managed to get it to map the drives via a batch file in startup

but when i shelled gameex it failed to work so it looks like its back to were i started

I don't use a networked drive in Gameex, but I do have to connect to one when the automatic windows backup kicks in monthly.

Here's what is in my batch file, which specifies the drive letter I want the share to be. Works like a charm:

net use z:\\myservername\drive_share_name\folderNameIfRequired

where "z" obviously is the drive letter you want the share to map to. I always make them high up in the alphabet to avoid conflicts with flash drives, daemon tools, etc.

[bkenobi]

I was just doing a bit of research and found a detailed article about using the 'net' command. One thing they mentioned was that for use on XP and 2003, you can use WSH, which they describe as having "arguably better support". Anyway, just thought I would point that out since they even include an example script.

WSH documentation

[Michael]

  bkenobi said:

I was just doing a bit of research and found a detailed article about using the 'net' command. One thing they mentioned was that for use on XP and 2003, you can use WSH, which they describe as having "arguably better support". Anyway, just thought I would point that out since they even include an example script.

WSH documentation

I have looked on the net and found how to reduce the timeout when windows looks for the server this works better not the best solution but its a lot more barable now

thanks everyone for your help and ideas

[bkenobi]

Well....

You're just going to leave us hanging? Give us an idea of what you did or where you found the solution at least.