possible GP issue...

[tha 4NiK8R]

Here is the issue:

I came into an all W2K site today. Group Policy is in effect and is set to lock down users pretty hard. The issue I am having is that all the floppy drives in the network are "In use by another process" and cannot be accessed in any way even from the command prompt (format, etc). This includes the floppy drives on the servers and my laptop (when added to the domain). I have run through the Group Policy settings and can find nothing that would cause this. I have no real backgroud data other than I believe it may be a group policy setting, but I may be wrong. No virus activity on the network (Norton Corporate 7.6 is in place and I manually scanned the Servers with my laptop running AVG Pro). Any ideas?

[ilovetheusers]

I can't find anything in the M$ KB. You sure it's not permissions? Log on as admin and see if they can access. One way or the other it helps to narrow the issue down. Hope this helps some.

[Ya_know]

Ok. I found this to hide drives:
<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q231289" target="_blank">Using Group Policy Objects to Hide Specified Drives in My Computer for Windows 2000 (Q231289)</a> However, you can still access the drive from the run command, and the CMD prompt.

In the same location in a group policy (described in the above article) there is an additional option to "Prevent access to drives from My Computer". That offers an error if you type in a: at the run command, but you still have normal access at the CMD prompt. So I was baffled trying to recreate the symptoms you have described.

After some more KB killing, I found this: <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q307027" target="_blank">Drives That Are Blocked By a Group Policy Are Still Accessible By Using the Search Tool (Q307027)</a> This talks about a supported fix which I believe is preventing me from mimicking your scenario. If this is what is going on at your site, It is possible a current hotfix that was applied to that system had the fix included, however, I am going to back off; I have tested as far as I want to go, and don’t want to install any hotfix just to see if it will make a difference.

Perhaps if you reset the setting for "Prevent access to drives from My Computer" for whatever group policy is making the change for your user ID, you should be all set. Remember that GP’s can be set at many different container and domain levels; depending on how deep in a directory you are, there could be several GP’s to go through before you find which one is making this happen, also you may have a Policy Inheritance Block enabled at some point, that will make things harder for you to narrow down. On that note, if you were to move yourself to a separate container, set your own GP with no restrictions, then Block inheritance, you should be all set.

Good luck!