Windows 2003 Network

I am having a problem with Windows 2003 and XP connecting to regional
offices and am hoping someone has an idea as to what is going on or can
point me in a rough direction - otherwise it is an expensive call to PSS.

All offices have a mix of Windows 2000 server, Windows 2003 server and
Windows XP clients and there is a leased line that connects the 5 regional
offices via MPLS.

If I am on either Windows 2003 Server or XP client, any connection to
regional offices drop very frequently (literally every couple of seconds)
with the error "The specified network name is no longer available" -
therefore users are unable to copy any data between the offices - The
problem started a while back with large files and has gradually got worse so
we are now at the point where the connection is not sufficeint to copy even
a few KB.

If I use Windows 2000, I can copy data of any size with out problem - but we
need to decomission the 2000 servers asap as they are 6 years old and
hardware reliability is becomming an issue.

We have a Cisco PIX handling routing and NAT between the offices - this
config has been checked and confirmed to be OK.

All servers and clients are fully patched using WSUS.

Any ideas?

Cheers for any help.

I had a similar problem but it would drop connections every 10-15
minutes. I changed the server timeout to never drop any connections
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297684 I use the net config command
line option. Have you tried to use the performance tool to see what
exactly is it doing is dropping the connections because of timeout or
because of errors, just open performance monitor and add connection
timeout, error, etc. under SERVER also you might want to add all
subcategories under Network category to see what exactly is going on.
Another issue might be your WINS server, make sure that their all
correct, also try to ping by server name whenever you get that error
message or trace it by server name to give you more clues.

Hope this will point in the right direction
Igor Pinchevskiy

Thanks for the pointers. I have checked the WINS server, but nothing else
that you have suggested (networking is my real weak point).

Wayne


"Igor Pinchevskiy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) oups.com...
>I had a similar problem but it would drop connections every 10-15
> minutes. I changed the server timeout to never drop any connections
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297684 I use the net config command
> line option. Have you tried to use the performance tool to see what
> exactly is it doing is dropping the connections because of timeout or
> because of errors, just open performance monitor and add connection
> timeout, error, etc. under SERVER also you might want to add all
> subcategories under Network category to see what exactly is going on.
> Another issue might be your WINS server, make sure that their all
> correct, also try to ping by server name whenever you get that error
> message or trace it by server name to give you more clues.
>
> Hope this will point in the right direction
> Igor Pinchevskiy
>