Conference decwet::winnt-clusters

658.0. "Win95 client need Explorer to refresh net connects" by MDR01::MONJE (MCS Madrid) Wed Feb 26 1997 06:26

    Hi,
    
    Has anybody seen this before ?
    
    Digital Clusters for Windows NT beta 1.1 at two ALPHA 2100 with a BA450
    disk storage cabinet. NT 4.0 SP#2. NetBEUI and TCP/IP transport.
    All works fine.
    
    WFW 3.11(TCP/IP transport) and Windows 95(TCP/IP transport) Digital 
    Clusters clients beta v1.1 . 
    
    We have done failover/failback tests in the Cluster with applications
    like MS-Word, MS-Excel, MS-PowerPoint, cc:MAIL, and much more served as
    file shares, and also with Personal File Shares where users save their
    personal documents and files.
    
    Curiously we have detected the next rare behaviour with Windows 95
    Digital Clusters clients only (WFW 3.11 clients works OK):
    
    - The user is loading/writing a file from/to its Personal File Share 
      using any of the typical MS-Office 95' application (Word, Excel, ...).
    
      We force a fail on the cluster: one CPU at the cluster fails. The 
      second CPU takes control of the disks/shares served by the first CPU, 
      and offers them to the clients again.
    
      The application that is loading/writing the file from/to the Personal
      share gives an error message and it stops and aborts its execution.
    
      From here, when the user runs again the application (Word, Excel, 
      Powerpoint,...) and repeats the load/write action from/to the
      Personal Share, the application gives an error message about it
      cannot access to drive O:\ (the personal share) --> Not available. 
      When the user repeats the operation (load/write a file from/to 
      the personal share), the application gives a different error message: 
      network name not found !
     
      The only workaround I have identify to this problem (?) is:
     
      Run the Win95 Explorer and refresh the status
      of the network drive O:\ (it is available from the Explorer). 
      After that, when the user tries to repeat the load/write action from any
      application it works correctly because now it can see the O:\ drive
      as available.
    
    Very easy to reproduce that situation in any Windows 95 cluster client.
    
    
    Any inputs ?
    
    
    Best regards,
    
    Antonio M.
    

    re: MDR01::MONJE
    
    I see this as a Win95 problem.  Maybe Win95 has a registry setting that
    will cause Explorer to refresh properly, but from my own use of Win95
    in a non-cluster environment with default settings, its poor refresh
    behavior drives me crazy!
    
    $.02,
    
    /Bill

    I imagined problem seems to be related with Windows-95 but it was the
    first time for me to detect this anomalous Explorer behaviour when we
    were doing a cluster demo to a customer and we were working with a
    Win95 cluster client 
    
    Bad luck ...  :-|
    
    Hope Windows-95 will be more friendly with us in a future !
    
    Thanks a lot!