windows 7 enterprise : 'net use' fails with 'system error 50 has occurred'

Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 x64

I was having problems mapping a local drive to a network shared folder, so I opened cmd.exe and ran :

> net use
> System error 50 has occurred
> The request is not supported.

I've Google'd this extensively and apparently a lot of people have this problem, but very few have found solutions.

I investigated some of root causes others uncovered , such as mangled registry key values at :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\HwOrder

How can I further diagnose this issue ?

What could have caused a very basic system-level command such as net use to begin failing ?

but in those respects my system seems to be fine

BaltoStar

Posted 2014-02-13T01:36:08.067

Reputation: 189

Is the network shared folder a Samba or a Windows share ? Also, is your machine a member of a domain ? – user2196728 – 2014-02-13T01:52:18.850

I've looked around the net a bit, and it looks like part of your networking stack is corrupted. Time to reimage/reinstall/reformat. – HopelessN00b – 2014-02-13T12:57:04.060

The network shared folder I was attempting to connect to is Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard. But my understanding of net use is that it should list all shares. In the case when there are no shares, it should display a message no entries in the list. – BaltoStar – 2014-02-13T19:01:57.613

@BaltoStar That's correct. net use by itself should return a "table" listing the mapped drives, or something like the image here, if there are none. Like I said, it's time for you to reimage/reinstall/reformat.

– HopelessN00b – 2014-02-13T20:17:43.070

3For me, this issue showed up after installing SSHFS, and the keys looked like: "RDPNP,LanmanWorkstation,webclient,Dokan". I removed the ",Dokan", and it worked. But, I assume, SSHFS is borked now. – Codex24 – 2016-02-24T16:13:44.747

1This fixed my problem with win_sshfs as well. I ended up uninstalling it and still had to fix the registry key. It just wasn't worth the freezing when accessing disks. – Mark – 2017-01-05T17:58:16.583

@Codex24 this regarding the dokan used by win-sshfs was quite the catch. but I still need to use win-sshfs. bummer – nass – 2018-10-15T09:51:49.883

Thanks, this fixed me problem as well. I had a Dokan entry in each key, and removing it from HwOrder fixed it, too. (Dokan was installed through some NFS client, I believe.) – bers – 2020-02-11T23:29:59.340

windows 7 enterprise : 'net use' fails with 'system error 50 has occurred'

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