How to connect (Maping) and disconnect a network drive in Windows XP / Windows 7..

To connect and disconnect a network drive in Microsoft Windows XP, you can use one of the four methods that are described in this article. You can map a drive letter to any shared resource on a network. When you do so, you can quickly and easily access the resource by using either the Windows XP user interface or a command prompt. For each mapped drive, an icon appears in My Computer and a listing appears in the left pane of Windows Explorer. 

Connect a drive from My Network Places

1. Click Start, click My Network Places, click Entire Network, and then double-click Microsoft Windows Network.
2. Double-click the domain that you want to open.
3. Double-click the computer that has the shared resource you want to map. All the shared resources for that computer automatically appear in the window.
4. Right-click the shared drive or folder that you want to map, and then click Map Network Drive.
5. Click the drive letter that you want to use, and then specify whether you want to reconnect every time that you log on to your computer. 
   
   Note Network drives are mapped by using letters starting from the letter Z. This is the default drive letter for the first mapped drive you create. However, you can select another letter if you want to use a letter other than Z.
6. Click Finish. 
   
   A windows opens that displays the contents of the resource you mapped.

Connect a drive from My Computer or Windows Explorer

1. To connect a drive from My Computer, click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Explore.
   
   To connect a drive from Windows Explorer, right-click Start, and then click Explore.
2. On the Tools menu, click Map Network Drive.
3. In the Drive box, click a drive letter.
4. In the Folder box, type the UNC path for the server and shared resource in the following format: \\server name\share name. You can also click Browse to find the computer and shared resource.

You can map shared drives and shared folders. When you access a shared drive or folder you can also access subfolders if you have the appropriate permissions. However, you cannot map a drive for a subfolder that is not explicitly configured as a shared resource.

Use the Net Use command to map or disconnect a drive

You can use the net use command for batch files and scripts. To use the net use command to map or disconnect a drive:

• To map a network drive:
  1. Click Start, and then click Run.
  2. In the Open box, type cmd.
  3. Type net use x: \\computer name\share name, where x: is the drive letter you want to assign to the shared resource.
• To disconnect a mapped drive:
  1. Click Start, and then click Run.
  2. In the Open box, type cmd.
  3. Type net use x: /delete, where x: is the drive letter of the shared resource.

Disconnect from a mapped network drive

1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
2. Right-click the icon for the mapped drive.
3. Click Disconnect.

Note When you disconnect from a mapped drive, you remove the mapped drive letter that you assigned to the shared resource. You can still access the resource from My Network Places.

Problem

So let's recap. Your home network is configured fine. You can play LAN games, you can access shared folders on the network. There are no issues with services, router, open ports, firewall, or anything of the sort. Homegroup could be working fine, your workgroup is set correctly, and still you're in a bit of a spot. The one problem that is stumping you is the fact that you cannot get the entire drives to be shared.

You will see an error like: you do not have permissions to access \\COMP\Share.

Now, let's see the fix for this thingie.

Solution

The solution is seemingly quite simple, but it's also rather complicated, as it involves changing the security level of the drive, by allowing additional users to access it. Even though you may specify certain users or groups in the Share options, the Security options of the system will override those, and you won't see any relevant messages.

So, the sharing permissions will be ignored if they conflict with the security settings. The image below shows you what a potential sharing setup might be, after you go through all the dozen little windows and tabs that let you do that.

What you need to do is adjust the security level - and add the users you want to be able to access the share. If this is a user on another computer, you have a problem. First, if you are not a member of a domain, but rather homegroup or workgroup, network users will not show in the available list of objects. This means you will need to create these additional users as local users on each host. Or use Everyone or Guest as the alternative.

Right-click on the drive, Properties, go to Security tab. Notice the group and user names defined in the system. If none of these match the network users who must access the drive, you will fail. Therefore, to add, click Edit. Then, add Everyone.

Finally set the permissions correctly. Again, make sure there's no conflict. For example, if you do not allow writing permissions here, then even if you specify that the share can be written to, you will actually fail. So you must make sure the correct security permissions are set and that they match the desired share. Only now you can share your drive as before and succeed.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial will save you some pain. It's trivial, if you think about it, but not really, because there's not one word of explanation why you might be failing, nothing in the Event log, and the overall complexity of the homegroup sharing and all that nonsense will leave you in total confusion.

Today, you learned something new. Most importantly, that you must carefully sample the available abundance of guides and tips online and choose only those that truly match your problem. If you're at the firewall level, do not read this. If you're struggling with the homegroup, good luck and do not bother reading this article yet. Well, we now know how we can share both folders and drives. And to think that Windows XP and 7 had such a simple and friendly mechanism, bless it. See you around.

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