Lost share handles?

[humbletech99]

I am having a user with a problem accessing a file over a windows share to a server. He has the file open in Excel and is using it, leaves Excel open for some considerable amount of time and then when he goes to do some more work and save it he gets an error about lost writes.

The Yellow popup box in the system tray says:

Windows - Delayed Write Failed
Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \\servername\e\dir1\dir2\dir3\dir4\94AB7160. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere."

Simultaneously on the server while this problem is occurring I go to check the open share handles and list all the files open over the shares. The file in question that is open above is not listed, so it looks like the share handle was lost and this is possibly why the user gets the error about not being able to write to the file.

There is no problem with permissions, he can save the file locally then copy it over the file at the destination but this sort of workaround should not be necessary. He can also edit the file in place, but it seems that after leaving it a while this weird behaviour happens.

Any ideas on troubleshooting or fixing this behaviour?

[Michael___]

Is he still using the machine and just not working in Excel, or is he leaving the machine for a long period of time? Just curious if the machine could be enabling some sort of power saving mode that is causing the loss of the network connection.

[humbletech99]

dunno, but even if he lost connection, shouldn't smb/cifs re-aquire the lock afterwards?

[Michael___]

Should being the key word......