NotoriousREV

I did a favour for my bro-in-law and set up a mini-network for his office using the bits of kit he bought without my advice

He's a got a BT Business hub, a Win2k3 server and a pair of laptops. The server is connected to the BT Business hub via ethernet cable, the 2 laptops connect using wi-fi. Both laptops have folder redirection for My Documents so that the laptop caches a local copy of the files and the files are synced with a share on the server when connected.

The problem is that the laptops lose connection to the server but not the network or internet and only reconnect once the server or laptop is rebooted. There's no error messages on either the laptops or the server.

I'm suspecting a dodgy cable or nic, but haven't had chance to view the stats.

Anyone else come across an issue like using the BT Business hub or with a similar setup?

WRX_Dazza

it the server being used as a domain controller with active directories or just a shared device?? ie: standalone server

NotoriousREV

It's AD (I didn't set it up as it's overkill)

Sonic'

Is it happening every 15 minutes ?

Had this last week at a site, changed the disconnect idle time to never time out, solved the problem

by default its 15 minutes to a server

NotoriousREV

Not sure, working with IT illiterates so the best I can get out of them is "it's not working". I'll have to go on site and recreate it for myself. I never charge enough for this kind of crap

Sonic'

Remote Desktop

NotoriousREV

Nah, I can't pick and choose my resonse times then

I wouldn't have got involved normally, but when I quoted £500 for the initial setup job, I expected them to say no. They didn't And 'cos it's family I can't tell them to **** off.

Sonic'

Give me their number, ill tell em to **** off

tbh I would still rather do remote desktop and charge the same

then I don't mess with family pc's

NotoriousREV

Solved it. Some sausage-fingered muppet (who for the sake of argument we shall call RotoriousNEV) managed to mis-type the ip address of the primary DNS server, which just so happened to be the AD-linked DNS server, so it couldn't dynamically updat DNS properly, which upset AD, which meant it dropped connections. Took me 2 minutes to resolve.

Unfortunately, I then ended up "taking a look" at a laptop for 3 hours and undoing the work of an idiot that thinks he knows about computers, you know the type: has 14 different anti-adware programs, 2 registry cleaners, 112 anti-virus programs and then wonders why his laptop runs slow...

WRX_Dazza

3 hours "taking a look" lol i can relate to that one!!!

glad you solved it