Why does Explorer call good network drive "Disconnected..."?

Factual Questions
1

I have WinXP computers, an ethernet switch, and a Linksys EFG80 hard drive on my home network.

Windows Explorer refers to the logical drives mapped to the Linksys as “Network Drive” or “Disconnected Network Drive”, seemingly at random and withour regard to how I am using them. Note, the drives work fine - I can access files on them from Explorer or any application. The only thing that looks wrong to me is that Explorer sometimes calles them “Disconnected” for no reason. In fact I can have two Explorer windows open, be looking around on a network drive with one, and have the other one calling it “Disconnected”.

Any ideas?

BTW I feel I may have to take the extreme step of making fun of anybody who answers the question, “Why doesn’t my network drive work?”. The drives DO work. That’s NOT the question. Even with this veiled threat, I suspect someone will answer the question I’m not asking, and the year is still too young for that sort of thing. Not that they aren’t trying to help…

2

Your drives are working fine. Near as I can tell, that’s a known bug in displaying the drive letters that’s been around since Windows 2000. It will happen on my mapped drives on my corporate LAN as well, from our file server. When I’ve been on the phone with Microsoft for other issues(stupid Exchange), I’ve often asked. They just kinda sigh and say “yeah, we know”. There used to be a Microsoft Knowledge base article on it, but I can’t seem to find it right now.

3

You could try changing or disabling the autodisconnect interval using one of the methods in Microsoft KB article 297684.