Using Portfast with BPDU Guard enabled to allow Login Scripts to work properly with Windows 7
Back History: Noticed when I first started deploying Windows 7 units here in the Office that I'd get the bubble for "Not all Network Drives available", If you went to My Computer, you'd see an Red X on all the Mapped Drives. If you clicked on them, they'd open and Red X would disappear. To my knowledge it really didn't stop anyone that had Win 7 from working with their Mapped drives. I didn't think much of it, figured it was only due to Windows 7 startup being faster than then the Network connection.
Note: Drives are Mapped using Login Scripts that run through the Users profile on a Windows 2003 Server. The Scripts are Batch files using the Net Use command line with first Delete, then re-map with Persistant:yes. XP Users never had any issues with same scripts
This started to become and issue when one of my Users got a new Unit with Windows 7 and she started telling me that she's losing her network connection to Mapped Drives. and on two occasions she got kicked out of Simply Account with errors that the Mapped Drive s: was not available. She also told me that a few times when she booted or rebooted,Windows wouldn't Map drives for her, even if she clicked on them in My Computer.
On her PC - I've turned off the Power Management option for NIC, I've disable IPV6, I've added the Registry setting for "EnableLinkedConnections" (KB937624), I replaced her Patch Cable and I moved her to another Data jack just to rule out those potential issues. I even tried the Policy setting to tell the system to Wait for Network Connections to complete.
Now since she tells me all this and I troubleshooting on her PC, I then started noticing that most of the Users were getting this "Network drives are not available bubble at started up or Re-start and thought what is doing this..... Further investigation on other units and I found out there are Event Errors being produced.
Event ID 1055, and Event 5719 are the consist ones and I have seen ID 1129. In my search I came across two Microsoft articles that state that One solution is to Enable "Portfast" on the Switch. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/247922 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938449.
I then checked to systems to make sure I could consistently create the issue and then I enabled Portfast and BPDU Guard on two Ports and both had the issue cleared up once I did that.
My question is, Is there any reason or disadvantage that I should not go ahead and enable PortFast and BPDU Guard on all Switch ports that have Host Nodes on them? I did read to exclude switch to switch link ports as that would not be good idea.
I also really don't fully understand issue and why Portfast is correcting it.
PS.. Switches are Allied Telsis
Note: Drives are Mapped using Login Scripts that run through the Users profile on a Windows 2003 Server. The Scripts are Batch files using the Net Use command line with first Delete, then re-map with Persistant:yes. XP Users never had any issues with same scripts
This started to become and issue when one of my Users got a new Unit with Windows 7 and she started telling me that she's losing her network connection to Mapped Drives. and on two occasions she got kicked out of Simply Account with errors that the Mapped Drive s: was not available. She also told me that a few times when she booted or rebooted,Windows wouldn't Map drives for her, even if she clicked on them in My Computer.
On her PC - I've turned off the Power Management option for NIC, I've disable IPV6, I've added the Registry setting for "EnableLinkedConnections" (KB937624), I replaced her Patch Cable and I moved her to another Data jack just to rule out those potential issues. I even tried the Policy setting to tell the system to Wait for Network Connections to complete.
Now since she tells me all this and I troubleshooting on her PC, I then started noticing that most of the Users were getting this "Network drives are not available bubble at started up or Re-start and thought what is doing this..... Further investigation on other units and I found out there are Event Errors being produced.
Event ID 1055, and Event 5719 are the consist ones and I have seen ID 1129. In my search I came across two Microsoft articles that state that One solution is to Enable "Portfast" on the Switch. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/247922 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938449.
I then checked to systems to make sure I could consistently create the issue and then I enabled Portfast and BPDU Guard on two Ports and both had the issue cleared up once I did that.
My question is, Is there any reason or disadvantage that I should not go ahead and enable PortFast and BPDU Guard on all Switch ports that have Host Nodes on them? I did read to exclude switch to switch link ports as that would not be good idea.
I also really don't fully understand issue and why Portfast is correcting it.
PS.. Switches are Allied Telsis
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