Map a network Drive in Windows

Question

I usually map a network drive on my users computers so they can access our fileserver. My question is that sometimes we change the location of the folders on our fileserver , so I have to delete and create a new map drive. Can the old one be edited and mapped to the updated path? I am using Windows XP and 7

Answer 1

Yes, you can map the old one with the edited path. Just goto Map Network drive option and enter a new path. You need to confirm by clicking 'OK' that you need to remap this network drive. So instead of deleting an existing mapped drive, you can overwrite it with the new path by mapping it with the updated path again.

Answer 2

Stick the drive mappings in a drives.bat batch file (you can put the username and password here too, but never do that in commercial environments) Put batch file in startup directory.

@echo off 

(not necessary, but just makes the output cleaner to look at)

net use g: \\server\share /persistent:no (/user:username password) 

No need for persistent:yes as it gets remapped on reboot

start g: 

(optional - brings up an explorer window to the drive, useful if you have a NAS which goes to sleep, as this command will wake it up, otherwise you sometimes get a long delay if browsing to the drive letter within applications - Word 2007 for example)

Sometimes Explorer forgets to map the drives, but if they are done in a batch file like this, they never get forgotten.

Answer 3

Restart Server service on the Win 7 machine.