Simple drive sharing question in a work group network

S

sram

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
1,699
Hello folks.

We have this small work group network at network, and one machine is acting like the main machine(I won't call it a server because this is a work group). This machine has a
TB drive attached, and as you can guess it is shared among all computers. Things are fine except that sometimes when some machine will try to access the shared drive an error message will appear saying that : No more connections can be made to the host/remote machine or something like that.

If the main machine is restarted, the machine which wasn't able to access the drive will be able to access it just fine. The computers are about 30 I think. The main machine has windows xp pro in it. Not server, not advanced server. Just pro.....Do I really need server version anyways for just sharing a drive?

So, what is it? Am I really hitting the maximum number of connections that can be made to the machine with the shared drive? Can I increase the number of connections? Can I have machines drop the connection after sometime of inactivity to allow access for other machines?


Am I clear enough?

I can upgrade XP to windows 7 ultimate if 7 has a bigger maximum for remote connections.


Thanks.
 
Personally I would look into getting a dedicated server to run your file sharing tasks, especially for 30 computers. In fact for that many machines, I would investigate setting up a domain for management and what not, but that is another story in itself.

On the connection limit, a quick google search shows that XP has a limit of 10 w/ the connections expiring after 15 minutes of inactivity.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314882

From what I can gather, doing a clean install of any version of Windows 7 will have a limit of 20 connections, note that this is a clean install and not an upgrade, there was a post on Tom's Hardware about an individual who performed an upgrade and had a limit of 10 in place.

So for the time being if the funds are not available I would perform a clean install of Windows 7 on the machine you are having host the files, and possibly look into turning the inactive time on connections down.

If the opportunity arises I would get a small server to perform your file sharing duties. In fact if I remember correctly, I had a buddy at my old job who had a similar issue w/ a Windows Server 2003 machine in workgroup mode, only allowing 10 file sharing connections I believe. The issue ended up being the fact that it was in workgroup mode, and that from what I can gather Microsoft frowns upon workgroups larger than 10 computers. Although my best guess would say that since this limit has been increased to 20 in Windows 7, the same may be true for Server 2008.
 
^ What he said. You could also look into getting a NAS for that was well. Are they large files?
 
Bobacus said:
Personally I would look into getting a dedicated server to run your file sharing tasks, especially for 30 computers. In fact for that many machines, I would investigate setting up a domain for management and what not, but that is another story in itself.

On the connection limit, a quick google search shows that XP has a limit of 10 w/ the connections expiring after 15 minutes of inactivity.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314882

From what I can gather, doing a clean install of any version of Windows 7 will have a limit of 20 connections, note that this is a clean install and not an upgrade, there was a post on Tom's Hardware about an individual who performed an upgrade and had a limit of 10 in place.

So for the time being if the funds are not available I would perform a clean install of Windows 7 on the machine you are having host the files, and possibly look into turning the inactive time on connections down.

If the opportunity arises I would get a small server to perform your file sharing duties. In fact if I remember correctly, I had a buddy at my old job who had a similar issue w/ a Windows Server 2003 machine in workgroup mode, only allowing 10 file sharing connections I believe. The issue ended up being the fact that it was in workgroup mode, and that from what I can gather Microsoft frowns upon workgroups larger than 10 computers. Although my best guess would say that since this limit has been increased to 20 in Windows 7, the same may be true for Server 2008.
Click to expand...

All clear buddy. Thanks to you and to whoever contributed here. I'll toss XP and start using 7.
 
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