Access is denied on mklink

Question

I am trying to get a symlink working over a network drive.

I have already tried suggestions on questions already asked, such as running as administrator and checking if the directory already exists. Unfortunately it still gives me the following error:

C:\Windows\system32>mklink /d \\myserver\SomeDir\SomeLink \\myserver\SomeOtherDir\MyDir
Access is denied.

Where SomeLink is the link I am attempting to create and Mydir is the directory I am trying to create it on.

Any ideas how I could get this working? The local machine is running windows 7 and the remote machine is running windows server 2008 R2 standard.

Answer 1

Robert is wrong. Remotely mklink DOES work. Here is the solution:

Run command prompt as admin and then run this command:

fsutil behavior query SymlinkEvaluation

If you see message "Remote to remote symbolic links are disabled.", then run this command:

fsutil behavior set SymlinkEvaluation R2R:1

After that, you can run

mklink /d \\myserver\SomeDir\SomeLink \\myserver\SomeOtherDir\MyDir

Answer 2

By default mklink only affects the local computer. Remote manipulations are not possible in that case.

Therefore if you want to add a symbolic directory link on a remote machine try to execute mklink.exe via PsExec on the remote server, then using the local directory path of the two directories.