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Well... trying to map to a non-existent name that it cannot resolve is not the same as trying to map to one it can resolve but behaves like a Tarpit.



True. If the server is not actually down then you may get this sort of problem, and there is not really a good solution.

The problem is that the server may be sufficiently active to accept any part of the drive mapping process and *then* block - something like a hung process which has set a kernel latch to protect an atomic operation.

As far as the client is concerned it has a valid and active connection, so it will not time out. If the client is in a system call it may not be possible to timeout even if you wanted to.

I think it's fair to say that this was an unusual situation so any sort of aberrant behaviour is possible.