You open File Explorer and the drive you use every day is gone, or it is still listed with a red cross next to it and will not open. Almost always this means your computer has lost its connection to the server holding those files. The files themselves are still there.

Three things cause this nearly every time: the computer cannot reach the server over the network, a login prompt appeared at some point and was closed without entering the password, or the server is switched off or in the middle of a restart.

Try this first

1. Ask one other person in the office whether they can open the shared drive. This is the single most useful thing you can do. If nobody can open it, the problem is the server or the network and there is nothing to fix on your own computer. If it is only you, keep going through the steps below.
2. Restart your computer properly. Click Start, then the power icon, then Restart. Choose Restart rather than Shut down, and do not just close the laptop lid. A restart re-establishes the connection to the server and the login that goes with it, and this alone fixes most cases.
3. Check you are actually on the office network. Click the network icon at the bottom right of the screen. If you are on a phone hotspot, a cafe network, or home wi-fi, the shared drive will not appear unless you are connected to the office remotely. Reconnect to the office wi-fi or plug the network cable back in.
4. If you work from home, check your remote connection. If you normally connect through a VPN (a secure tunnel back to the office network), open it and confirm it says connected before looking for the drive again.
5. Open File Explorer and click This PC in the left-hand column. Sometimes the drive is present but collapsed out of view. If it is listed there, double-click it once and give it a few seconds to wake up.
6. Look for a login box hiding behind other windows. If Windows asked for a username and password and the box was dismissed, the drive will stay disconnected until you restart. Restarting clears this.

Please do not re-map the drive yourself

It is tempting to right-click and map the folder again under a spare letter such as Z. Please do not. Everyone in the office is set up with the same drive letter on purpose, and shortcuts, templates, database files and accounting software often store the full path including that letter. If your copy is on a different letter to everyone else's, your links break in ways that are slow and annoying to unpick later, and the original problem is still there underneath.

If that didn't fix it

Log a ticket and tell us three things: whether other people can see the drive, the drive letter and folder name you are missing, and whether you are in the office or working remotely. If you saw an error message, the exact wording helps a great deal. A photo of the screen is fine.

If nobody in the office can reach the drive, say so in the first line of the ticket, or call us. That changes it from one person's problem to something affecting the whole office, and we will treat it that way.

How to stop it happening again

If this happens to the same computer repeatedly, it is usually a sign of something worth fixing properly rather than restarting around: a flaky network cable or port, a wireless connection dropping when the machine sleeps, or a stored password that no longer matches. Mention that it is a repeat when you log the ticket and we will look for the cause rather than just reconnecting you.

Still stuck?

Log a ticket at portal.yougrowit.com.au or email support@yougrowit.com.au. If it is stopping you working right now, call 03 9028 4358.

Support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm Melbourne time, excluding Victorian public holidays.