Mapped drives, red X, how to disable?

Polygeekery

I have searched for everything I can on the subject and cannot find the information necessary. Any guidance would be appreciated.

So, here's the issue: Users

Yeah, no surprise there. But we have a NFP that we support that has a lot of older users. These older users normally don't pay attention to fucking anything, but a couple of months ago they had some connectivity issues that have since been resolved and before the issue was solved they noticed that when they were having problems mapped drives and shortcuts for mapped drives would show the red X. But, for Windows, that red X can frequently mean fuckall.

So now they are driving us fucking crazy.

If their workstation has a momentary lag getting a DHCP lease and the mounting of the mapped drive takes too long? Red X, ticket submitted.

Wifi takes a bit to connect after they start up their laptop? Red X, ticket submitted.

In a perfect world you could explain to the problem users that "It may not mean anything. It shows that until a connection has been established. Most of the time it doesn't mean anything so go ahead and click on the link to open it and if you then get an error submit a ticket and we will get it taken care of ASAP" or "If you are out of the office where the mapped drives will not connect and then you come back in to the office and login to your laptop it may show that until you open the drive for the first time so go ahead and try to open it before assuming there is a problem and it will likely go away".

But no.

Red X > submit ticket > annoy support people

That is their current workflow and short of murdering them all I do not know how to break this cycle with them. So what the hell can I do to remove the goddamn red X of support annoyance? I have already edited the registry to change the timeout period for autodisconnect. The only rational next step I can come up with is chains on the doors and arson.

Magus

@Polygeekery I know a lot of ticket submission software will pull up similar things and not let you send the ticket if it's the same thing someone else has asked and it has an answer. Can you get it abstracted like that somehow?

Polygeekery

@Magus like, tying duplicate submissions to a IoT electrical plug control that sends 110V through their chair?

I could try that.

To elaborate, it is not even always them submitting a ticket. It is frequently a phone call.

mott555

Change your rates and charge quadruple for dealing with any issues about a red X.

Vixen

@Polygeekery can you change the drive mapping to not auto reconnect on login so the mapping is there and the drive shows up but until someone accesses it it's not mapped so no red X

Spin it as a performance enhancement to the login procedure.

then issue a FAQ document and quadruple your rates for issues that are addressed in the latest FAQ document what is updated and resent each quarter.

izzion

Easiest way to work around the problem would probably be to map the drives ephemerally instead of persistently, and write a startup/logon script that checks for the presence of the network connection (or otherwise has a delay to allow for most reasonable case) and then re-map the drives on every logon.

Which doesn't solve the problem of they took their laptop to the conference room and omg the S: drive disconnected, but at least it covers like 80% of the red X cases?

brie

@Polygeekery As a last resort, maybe override the network drive icon. Change Z to the drive letter.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\Z\DefaultIcon]
@="SHELL32.dll,-16779"

I assume the icon index should be the same, but if the wrong icon shows up you could just use this .ico resource.

shell32_16779.ico

Polygeekery

@brie that should work. You're amazing. I was going about it all wrong, looking for a way to disable it reporting that it is disconnected by stopping the icon change. That's why I ask others. To get the alternative that I didn't think of.

Tsaukpaetra

@brie said in Mapped drives, red X, how to disable?:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

I kinda wonder if that same entry can be put into the user's hive instead of the machine hive. That way lusers can have that setting and anyone smarter won't need the trickery...

Polygeekery

@Tsaukpaetra said in Mapped drives, red X, how to disable?:

That way lusers can have that setting and anyone smarter

You sweet, sweet, summer child.

Tsaukpaetra

@Polygeekery said in Mapped drives, red X, how to disable?:

@Tsaukpaetra said in Mapped drives, red X, how to disable?:

That way lusers can have that setting and anyone smarter

You sweet, sweet, summer child.

I've put in innocence up for auction, 200k starting bid. Sadly, nobody wants it...

I guess I'll just hold onto it forever, maybe that will increase its value...