We have a mix of Windows 8 and 8.1 computers whose users are assigned drive mappings via Group Policy Preferences. If a computer is connected to the office network, or a remote user is connected via VPN, everything works fine; if a user is working remotely without a VPN connection, using Windows Explorer hangs while trying to access the network drives. The drive mappings never time out, and Explorer becomes completely unusable. This has been shown to happen even using a file open dialog from within an application, even if a network drive is never selected, expanded, or opened.
An experiment with drive maps to the same paths made solely from a login script results in drives that do time outwithin a few seconds, and a dialog pops up that says "Windows cannot access \\mapped drive path. Check the spelling. There might be a problem with the network. Error code 0x80070035." This dialog never appears when using GPP mappings.
We need to figure this out or revert (probably forever) to login scripts, which will introduce new 'adventures' since remote or wifi-only users never get login scripts.
Drive mapping policy settings are as follows:
Action: Replace
Properties: Letter L
Location: \\mapped drive path
Reconnect: Enabled
Label as: Shared
Use first available: Disabled
Hide/Show this drive: Show
Hide/Show all drives: No change
Stop processing items on this extension if an error occurs on this item: No
Run in logged-on user's security context (user policy option): No
Remove this item when it is no longer applied: No
Apply once and do not reapply: No
We also have a few computer-side policy settings which may be relevant:
Allow processing across a slow network connection: EnabledProcess even if the Group Policy objects have not changed: Enabled
Background priority: Idle