Fix: Mapped Drive Gets Disconnected in Windows 11/10

You may already know the terms drive mapping or mapped drive. If you don’t, a mapped drive is a shortcut to a drive physically available on a different PC. It is usually available on My Computer. However, mapped drives come with their share of minor issues, but frequent disconnections are the most common. In this article, we’ll learn more about mapped drives and how to fix mapped drive disconnection issues. So without any further delay, let’s begin.

How To Fix Frequent Mapped Drive Disconnections

Before approaching the actual fixes, it’s essential to know what causes the issues in the first place. As far as mapped drives are concerned, the most common issue of frequent disconnections is caused by an essential feature called the default timeout period for the connection.

We need to uplift this timeout period to stop mapped drives from getting disconnected independently. Aside from the default timeout period, other bugs might create this issue. Here are all the methods covered in this article:

1. Turn Off Auto Disconnect Using Windows Terminal
2. Turn Off Auto Tuning Using Windows Terminal
3. Using Registry Editor
4. Using Group Policy
5. Fixing Other Potential Bugs That Lead To Disconnections

You will need an administrator account to execute these steps.

1] Turn Off Auto Disconnect Using Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal is a command line utility that can perform specific functions or execute programs in Windows. You can also extend the time for the drive auto disconnect feature with the help of Windows Terminal. Here’s how to do this:

• Right-click the Windows start icon and click on the Windows terminal (Admin) option to open the elevated Windows terminal.
• In the Windows Terminal, paste the following command and hit enter. (Replace the number with the number of minutes you want the auto disconnect to delay, the default is 10 minutes)

net config server /autodisconnect:number

• You can delay the auto disconnect to 65535 minutes, virtually disabling the feature.

2] Turn Off Auto Tuning In Windows Terminal

• Open Windows Termin with admin permission
• To turn auto tuning off, type and execute the following command:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel = disabled

• And if this doesn’t work, try:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=high

• To turn it on again, execute the below command:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel = normal

Once you get an Ok message, reboot your computer for settings to take place. To make sure the Auto Tuning setting was changed, run the command:

netsh interface tcp show global

This will display all the major config of TCP, and you will see Recieve Windows Auto Tuning Level as disabled if you set it so.

3] Using Registry Editor

Before disconnection, you can use the Windows Registry Editor to change the system settings stored as values for the mapped drive default timeout period. Follow the steps listed below to change the same:

• Open Registry Editor 
• In the Windows Registry Editor, navigate to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters

• Find the key named autodisconnect on the right-hand side of the screen and double-click on it. If you can’t find the auto disconnect key, right-click on empty space, click on New, click on DWORD (32-bit) Value, and set the name as autodisconnect. Don’t forget to double-click on it to continue.
• 
• Choose the base as Hexadecimal, and set the value as ffffffff in the Value Data box.
• Click on OK.

4] Using Group Policy

You can use Group Policy as a convenient method of mapping network drives. It is simple and easy, and you can also use it to make changes to a mapped drive created before. You can use the following steps to make changes to a possibly misconfigured drive that causes frequent disconnections using the Action setting via Group Policy:

1. Open the Windows Group Policy Editor on your desktop by searching for it in the Windows search bar.
2. Locate and click on User Configuration.
3. Under the User Configuration menu, find and click on Preferences, then click on Windows Settings.
4. Navigate to Drive Maps, and find the Action box under the General section.
5. Choose Update from the available actions, namely Create, Delete, Replace, and Update.
6. Click on Apply and then click on OK.

Doing so will modify the settings of an existing mapped drive for users.

This method applies to computers connected to Enterprise or Domain networks. Read more about it here.

5] Disabling Offline Files and Fixing Other Potential Bugs That Lead to Disconnection

You can face mapped drive disconnection issues even after you’ve modified the existing mapped drive using the Windows Group Policy Editor or uplifted the default timeout period for a disconnection using the Windows Registry Editor.

You can try disabling offline files in a mapped drive to avoid the issue of frequent disconnection. Many times, the drive may not have been mapped correctly, thus causing it to disconnect frequently. In such as case, you can try remapping the drive to fix those issues.

Conclusion

In this article, we learned about mapped drives and the common issues we can face when using one. Mapped drives are a great way to share files and folders across workgroups. However, they have been losing popularity lately due to the advent of cloud-based file sharing, which also lacks many such issues discussed in the article. We’ll wrap this article up, hoping it will help you.