SQL & PL/SQL :: UTL_FILE.FGETATTR Can't Access Files On Network Disk After Database Server Was Restarted

I managed to upload images to a database server, resize them, copy to the application server and everything worked just fine - the Apex page successfully displayed images. Since last week, things have broken. This is how: there's a directory object which points to application server's directory:

SQL> select * from all_directories;

OWNER DIRECTORY_NAME DIRECTORY_PATH
------- ------------------------------ -----------------------------------
SYS SLIKE_4005_UPLOAD d:gisslike_4005_upload --> on a database server
SYS SLIKE_4005 \my-iasd$homegisslike_4005 --> on an application server

SQL>

I can use a directory located on a database server:

D:GISSlike_4005_upload>dir photo_resize.*
Volume in drive D is RAID
Volume Serial Number is 88F2-69D2
Directory of D:GISSlike_4005_upload
[code]....

How come it doesn't work? I was absent last week, database server was restarted for some reason (there were Windows' updates which required restarting). After that, all applications (lucky us, just two of them, but in multiple procedures/functions) return FALSE for UTL_FILE.FGETATTR.

We recreated directory objects, but that didn't work (UNC or not, no difference). I Googled quite a lot, read Metalink notes - nothing I did solved the problem.

what these OS updates were about; maybe they are not to be blamed at all. Both servers (database & application) run MS Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition Service Pack 2. In the meantime, a colleague developed a workaround (it uses UTL_HTTP) which works, but it is MUCH slower than the previous UTL_FILE.FGETATTR option.

Why don't we keep these images on the database server (instead of the application server)?I was told that Apache is incapable of accessing mapped network directories so we used what we could.