SAP Disconnection Problem on Windows Vista

After installing some recent patches on both Vista and SAP Gui, I started to experience a weird and annoying problem. If I leave SAP Gui idle for about 30 seconds and then hit a button or something, I get disconnected from SAP.

When I try to reconnect, the system tells me that my account is already logged on. This made me clear that SAP kept my previous session alive; therefore my disconnection problem probably doesn’t have anything to do with SAP R/3 server.

I experienced the same problem on wireless and cable networks; therefore it isn’t a hardware problem either. I also upgraded all of my drivers; still, no luck.

Disabling all the 3rd party applications, services and anti-virus type of programs didn’t help either.

I tried messing around with the ipconfig tool; using commands like ipconfig / release and ipconfig /renew, which didn’t help.

I tried uninstalling all of SAP related applications (SAPGui, Netweaver Business Client, etc), restarting the machine, and reinstalling them. This also worked temporarily – the disconnection problem started to occur again after the next reboot.

Finally, I have found an unpleasant but effective workaround. Exiting all SAP Gui related windows (including SAP Logon), disabling & enabling my network adapter through the Windows control panel and restarting SAP Gui helped most of the time. Apparently, this workaround works on cable networks as well as wireless networks.