I have a question concerning mapping drives with Group Policy Preferences (GPP) as it pertains to machines that have left the network. I'll explain.
We have a Win2K8R2 domain with mostly Win7 clients (~7,000 with a few XP and 8 thrown in). We are using GPP to map various departmental drives to user accounts without issues. However, if someone removes a workstation (a laptop for example) from the network to work for home or to travel on business, the logon times on those workstations is considerably longer (measured in minutes) than if that same machine is on the corporate network. The problem seems to go away if the drive mapping GPOs are removed so we are left to assume that those GPOs are the culprit. It also seems to help to disable the machines wireless adapter prior to logging in, but that has proven to be a training and support nightmare so we aren't suggesting it to any non-technical users.
My assumption, based on the evidence, is that if Windows is connected to a network and has drives mapped, it will attempt to reconnect until it times out. Correct? With this in mind, I added an item-level target based on IP range. My think was that if the IP address was not that of the corporate network (141.165.0.0/16) that it simply wouldn't process. This proved problematic if the machine was connected to the network, but one of the adapters had an APIPA address and had to be removed.
Has anyone experienced similar issues or does anyone know of a setting that might help to avoid the issue.
I'll include a screen shot of a typical drive map configuration that we are using. The common tab is completely unconfigured so I haven't included a shot of it.
Thanks for any help you can offer.