Friday, March 27, 2015

Troubleshooting Connections

I spent a couple of hours yesterday trying to figure out why one of my computers (Windows7) suddenly could not see the rest of the local network or connect to the mapped drives I'd set up.  This was really aggravating, since the mapped drives were those on my Synology server, which makes copying files to/from the server a real pain if I can't see the server.

All of the sudden, two of the three drives I'd mapped on the server weren't there, and only some of the subfolders of the third drive were accessible. I could see the other folders on that drive, I just couldn't access them, nor the server, over the local network.

I hadn't made any hardware or software changes, so what happened?

  • Rebooting (a couple of times) didn't work.
  • I unmapped two of the drives that no longer worked. But couldn't unmap the third.
  • I checked the credential manager in Windows7 to see whether it had somehow been corrupted. No problems there.
  • I checked the network adapter to see that all of the network protocols were checked off. No problems there.
  • Checked the Network and Sharing Center settings to ensure Network Discovery was still enabled. Yup, no problems there.
  • Checked my firewall. Nope, That wasn't the problem. Scan the computer for viruses. Nope.
  • "Googled" the issue and read thru a number of suggestions. The ones that seemed relevant to me I checked and they didn't resolve the issue.
  • Checked the server from two other computers to see that the server's drive(s) were actually OK. That wasn't the problem.
  • Look through the Computer Services to see if some computer service has somehow been disabled. Nope.
  • Disabled the wireless connection. Hey, I'm guessing at this point.
  • Try using a Restore Point.  This looked like it was going to take a while, so I let it run overnight. Next morning, found the restore didn't work. Great..
  • Reboot in Safe Mode. Can't find anything there.
  • Wait a couple of hours....

  • Think (seriously) about chucking the computer.

  • Suddenly, everything's there. No idea why the problem took place or what I did (if anything) to fix it.
  • Remap the drives.


What a waste of a few hours.

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