How do I resolve the error "The local device name is already in use."?

I try to map a network resource to my local device.

I receive the following error: The local device name is already in use.

I have the problem to find which purpose the device is used for. I try a command net use and do not see it in the list, therefore, it is not mapped to a network resource.

Does anybody know how to see the list of all used devices in Windows 7?

Timofey

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 911

My shared folders were on a VM whose / partition was full. Cleared some space and it all started working again. Thanks for the hint! – None – 2015-11-03T23:14:55.280

The following MS support article identifies a problem that has the described symptoms. Resolution is to change a registry value. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/253821

– None – 2015-11-19T05:07:05.887

net use is the typical way to check. I'm not sure why it would be claiming to be in use if it is not there. – Jeff F. – 2011-02-01T14:30:50.793

@Jeff: exactly, also not clear for me – Timofey – 2011-02-01T14:34:55.907

@Tim silly question: Have you rebooted? Also have you ensured that no physical device is using that letter(in disk management) – Jeff F. – 2011-02-01T14:37:23.487

@Jeff: I use 2 physical disks that are partitioned into C:\ and V:\ correspondingly + 2 network resources that are mapped to W:\ and Z:\ as you see there is no I:\ among them. Why do I have to reboot? – Timofey – 2011-02-01T14:42:18.217

@Tim reboots have been the universal MS fixer since 3.0 :) – Jeff F. – 2011-02-01T14:43:42.950

@Jeff: Ok, I try it now – Timofey – 2011-02-01T14:44:30.180

If the network resource is on an XP machine, there's a bug in XP. You can check the Microsoft Knowledgebase to see if there's a hotfix. – Paused until further notice. – 2011-02-01T14:46:18.133

@Dennis: I can freely map a network resource to another device, for example, K:\ but still no success with I:\ It looks like there is no bug in the machine where the network resource is or? – Timofey – 2011-02-01T14:52:56.047

@Jeff: btw restart didn't help unfortunately – Timofey – 2011-02-01T14:53:16.703

@Tim, I doubt this will work but try net use I: /delete – Jeff F. – 2011-02-01T14:54:36.203

@Jeff: Unfortunately didn't help: Command: net use /DELETE I: Result: The network connection could not be found. – Timofey – 2011-02-01T14:57:12.250

I have noticed that there are also C:, E:, F:, G:, H:, I:, V:\ are missing when I try to map a network device via user interface. C:, V:\ are used as partitions and E:\ - for DVD/CD-ROM. I don't understand where are F:\ G:\ H:\ and I:\ – Timofey – 2011-02-01T15:02:11.697

Answers

You need to remap the drive.

First:

net use * /delete

Then remap it using net use again:

net use Z: \\server\share /user:username password

dekyos

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 301

1Why do I have to do this? The drive died on me literally while moving a file. This is outrageous. – rr- – 2015-04-05T10:29:42.823

Sadly this does not work sometimes. There is nothing to remove. It's a catch-22. There is nothing to remove, the drive letter is in use so you can't add a new map that uses it.

Windows just fails with mapped drives periodically and even restarting the workstation service doesn't help. – Douglas Gaskell – 2018-03-23T01:51:45.810

thank you sir!! I had disconnected a device from the gui, but the device name was "already in use". – Stefanos Kalantzis – 2012-03-15T13:36:28.270

It happened to me when I woke the computer from overnight sleep. I started stopping service after service and it seems that "Computer Browser" was at fault in my case. Try:

net stop "Computer Browser"  
net start "Computer Browser"

Gur

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 109

Use "Run as Administrator", otherwise you'll get an Access Denied error. – Danny Beckett – 2017-06-18T02:26:43.467

Worth noting that this can also be called simply as
net start browser
net stop browser
which may save a few keystrokes of typing for those so bothered!
Contending against unreliable connections, this is a much, much more agile method of recovery than a total reboot. – PowerLuser – 2018-06-14T10:26:37.903

I get "The service name is invalid." Perhaps this service has been renamed in Windows 10. – Simon East – 2018-07-15T23:26:23.057

1@SimonEast - you are correct, the new name is just Browser. – Mike – 2019-10-24T07:46:58.267

Delete the key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2.

Log off and then log on.

If it still does not work, disconnect all mapped drives either from GUI or better from command line as in the previous post, delete the reg key above and then log off and log on

Cliff Hogan

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 31

1The other options wouldn't help for me, but this fixed it. What happend was that for some strange reason, a CD drive appeared at D: (it's a virtual machine) which conflicted with my existing network mapping on D:. Removing this key and logging off/on showed the CD drive. – Pieter van Ginkel – 2014-04-12T06:15:01.877

One possibility that I just ran into is that you've added a device to your system that causes other "auto mapped" devices to bump up over the mapped drive.

Say you have M mapped to a network drive, but you add a new harddrive, that then causes all the removable drives (even though they don't have anything inserted into them) to bump up a letter (or two).

Now, suddenly, one of the removeable drives is mapped to M.

Your network drive can no longer be mapped to M, and when you try to remove the mapping, it'll give you a "Device already in use" error.

Open up "Storage/Disk management" and check ALL the drives for any mapping that might be on top of the drive you want to map.

If there, just remap that drive to something else.

Then you should be able to use NET USE to attach to your network drive properly.

drventure

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 121

We had a Windows 7 laptop user whose printer was being mapped as the drive in question. But it wasn't showing up in Start->Computer and it wouldn't show up when listing with NET USE. However, if you went to Disk Management there was a removable media disk listed with no displayed drive letter that was mapped as the drive letter in question. If you right-clicked it, it would display EPSON in the properties.

We changed the drive letter to something that was not being used in Disk Management.

I asked my boss why a printer would map a drive, and he said it was so that the printer itself would deliver the drivers instead of Windows having to download them; but it assigns a drive letter without notifying some other Windows components apparently.

The errors that we got for it were Event ID 4098 with error code 0x80070055 in the application logs and when trying to map the drive letter with NET USE, Error 85 The local device name is already in use.

leeand00

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 14 882

Good catch! In my case it was that Daemon Tools got wild and made about 7 virtual drives, which weren't shown on Windows Explorer, but yes on Disk Management as CDROMs – coloboxp – 2018-04-16T07:33:20.957

It may be a little late to answer this for the OP, but since others will continue to find this through search engines (like I did), I will add a solution that worked for me.

I work in an IT Department, and some of our users where experiencing this error today. The solution was to enable File and Printer Sharing.

AVG Anti-virus was used, so this option had to be enabled through the anti-virus firewall settings, and not Windows. So you'll need to adjust how you enable it if needed.

In my experience, shared drives never work when AVG decides to disable "File and Printer Sharing", though I'll always receive an error asking me to "check the spelling" or something similar. I have never seen it throw the "..Already in use" error until today.

Joseph Kreifels II

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 133

There's an outside chance the cause of this is that the share you're trying to reach doesn't exist or has been disabled.

Joe M

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 304

Yep. Think in my case the remote computer (a Mac) had gone into sleep mode or something. – Simon East – 2013-11-11T00:06:46.533

I had this problem, here is a possible solution, make sure your sharing server has space left on the OS or root drive or "/".

I run a samba server on linux and the root drive was full. If samba can't create logs it crash and from the windows side it fails with the error "local device name is already in use" for some obscure reason.

Shodan

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 101

This sounds dumb, but I had it happen to me recently as well and I was pulling my hair out. Drives were set up with no credentials and there were no duplicate mappings. Drives were mapped by IP. In short, there should be no issues, but the drives would randomly disconnect for 2-3 minutes while in use.

It turns out that when I made a small network change, the users chose the "Public" option on the network popup instead of "Work".

Yes, switching it back to "Work" resolved it for me. You can do it under "Network and Sharing Center" from the start menu and then click on the Public icon to change it back to Work.

Mike H

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 13

This does seem to solve quite different issue than what the OP asked. – zagrimsan – 2016-09-13T05:53:15.303

If you use a VPN to connect to the network that contains the network resource, the VPN can also cause this error:

In 'Network and sharing center', each network connection is given a network type (private/domain/home/public). I've seen situations where the VPN connection was stuck at 'Identifying...'. The network is considered Public until identification is finished, this means Windows Firewall will not allow connections to network drives via this connection.

Restarting the VPN usually solves the issue for me.

Hobbes

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 113

I ran into this today, on several windows 7 and linux clients mapping drives from a linux samba server. The problem turned out to be that my root drive on the server had run out of space. clearing up a few gigabytes and restarting the samba server fixed the problem.

Rudy

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 1

I was having the same issue on a Windows Server 2008 SBS while i was trying to connect to an old NAS.

After trying each of the suggestions i saw here, i wasn't able to fix this.

During troubleshooting i found out that the root of the issue could be one of the assigned server IP's.

Indeed that was. I went to NAS logs and i saw that it was adjusted to connect with the NAS admin username and password under a specific IP address which was assigned to the server instead of server's main IP address!

So for future reference, i would suggest to check if you are under multiple NICS on your machine. If so you might have to remap the network share from a particular location.

Also, don't forget to read the logs of each device carefully.

archergr

Posted 2011-02-01T14:27:06.900

Reputation: 19