One for the old timers DOS/MSCLIENT problem

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mjd

mjd

mjd

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As this is a little 'old school' I thought it would be better suited in here.
I have a couple of old Dos boxes at work that are obviously antiquated but nevertheless still in use and I have pleasure of maintaining. I am trying to copy some files to these boxes overnight with a simple xcopy on each dos box. The problem occurs after a random number of files have successfully copied. The error on the dos box is: The network device does not exist reading drive z: (z: being the share on one of the 2003 servers).
I've tried net config server thinking it was timeout related....but to no avail. No amount of googling is coming up with anything. I can only assume it must be a hardware/configuration issue on the dos boxes, but cant make head nor tail of it at the moment.

Any guesses would be very much appreciated :)
 
I imagine it's a problem with winsock and that it drops the share only for it to re-discover the share the next time it's attempted.

Is there a possibility you could limit the amount of files (perhaps making folders) and then xcopying them like that so you copy say 1000 files and then the next xcopy command copies another 1000 and so on and see if it's just an xcopy limit as well then.

I'd also check event logs on the 2003 box as well.


M.
 
Thanks for the reply.
The copy fails after only a handful of files (relatively speaking), but I will certainly try reducing the number copied per transaction.
I'll pretend I havent noticed the bit about checking the event logs.....*obviously this was the first thing I checked* ahem! :)
 
Buggy/deficient network drivers possibly. Also, SMB has evolved quite a bit over the years, so it's perfectly possible the DOS client just "doesn't understand".

Maybe explore other ways to transfer the files. Old versions of Laplink, or something like that.

Oh, and do seemingly obvious things like swapping for newer/shorter network cables too. You never know.
 
Thanks for the advice berserker. I am starting to lean towards a cabling fault and/or the nic, as the problem is random with no obvious pattern. Fingers crossed I'll make some headway with this today :)
 
Made some ground with this today. Have now reached the stage where I get no errors copying, but copying is stopping prematurely.
Nothing to note in the event log on my 2k3 server. The only thing I did spot is that looking at active sessions for the share the session seems to be stopping and starting a lot for no obvious reason. Ping responses are faultless between the two machines so a bit mor ehead scratching I think :)
 
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