Kept getting calls from clients about their network drives “disappearing” or disconnecting throughout the day at “random” intervals, so after much troubleshooting found these steps to take on the workstations and file server to help alleviate the issue:

Network Drive Red Xs On the Workstation:

1. Click on Start button then choose Control Panel
2. In Control Panel open the Device Manager
3. Expand the Network Adapters and open each one used on that workstation
4. Look in the Power Management tab and Advanced tabs to look for any power settings that would disable the device then uncheck them. Click OK button and close all other windows.
5. Open the Registry Editor.
6. Expand the tree to the following key:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Service\lanmanworkstation\parameters

7. If it doesn’t exist then create a REG_DWORD named KeepConn with the Decimal value of 86400 (aka 24 hours)
8. Reboot the workstation for changes to take effect.

Network Drive Red Xs On the Server:

1. Login as administrator
2. Open Command Prompt as administrator
3. Type in the following to disable Auto Disconnect of network drives:

net config server /autodisconnect:-1

4. Reboot the server for changes to take effect.