I'm no stranger to this error message, but I have a client who is
experiencing it, but, fortunately, without any actual data
corruption, and it's driving them made. Their inability to grasp
that the cause is fundamentally a networking problem is also making
me pull my hair out.
Some history:
The network is composed of five computers dating back to 1995, each
purchased one at a time, and each having a different OS, etc. Until
the recent purchase of an IBM laptop, the network was stable with
only two machines, a Win2K desktop (which was the peer-to-peer file
server) and a Win98 desktop (the primary workstation).
Previous to that, the Win98 desktop had been the file server, and
the other workstation was a Win95 box. That setup worked just fine.
During that time a Win98 laptop was purchased, but it was hardly
ever used, so I can't say whether or not it had any problems
connecting to the network.
When we got the Win2K box, I set it up as I always do, using TCP/IP
networking, and the Win98 workstation had trouble connecting at
anything but really slow speeds to the Win2K box. I eventually
installed NETBEUI on both boxes and then things worked fast (don't
let anyone tell you that NETBEUI is a bad networking protocol!).
Recently, a new IBM T42 was purchased to be used as primary
workstation for the boss, and the Win2K box was retired for use as
principle workstation. So, the new configuration was:
WinXP laptop --> Win2K P2P server
Previous was:
Win98 desktop --> Win2K P2P server (TCP/IP + NETBEUI)
Previous to that was:
Win95 desktop --> Win98 P2P server (no NETBEUI)
Also, in the current situation, with:
WinXP laptop --> Win2K P2P server
the Win98 laptop has also been revived.
When I set up the new WinXP laptop, I removed NETBEUI from
everything. But after that, both laptops (WinXP and Win98) have been
experiencing intermittent problems with network connectivity --
things start out great but after a few minutes (5-20), "disk or
network error" pops up. If the user then tries to access network
resources by some other method (My Network Places, etc.), they may
or may not get through (about 2/3s of the time, it succeeds, but the
remainder of times, it, too fails).
But in none of these cases has the data file ever been corrupted
(front ends on all the workstations, data file only on the P2P
server).
Also, when things *are* working on WinXP, the network is *slow*,
similar to the way things were failing with the Win98 workstation
connecting to the Win2K P2P server. Since the old situation seemed
to have been worked around by installing NETBEUI, we tried that with
the current batch of machines, but it didn't solve the problem (note
that with the old network problems, we weren't getting "disk or
network error," just poor performance).
We've replaced all the wiring. We've swapped hubs. We're currently
downloading all new network drivers, and looking into turning off
all AV scanning of MDBs.
Any other ideas what might be causing "disk or network error" with
no corruption, and no complaints from any other applications?
--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc