Mapping a Drive with NO DRIVE LETTER

[Matthew Jones]

I would like to map a share on a W2K server using the Share Name and NOT a
drive letter.
Furthermore, when a user goes to choose a drive path it should show up in
Network Listing under 'My Network Places'.

For example - Currently if I browse to 'My Network Places' from MS Word I
have an entry for: PublicForms on DOTMAIL1.

Reasons: I am phasing out my Novell Server. We had a shared drive "S" which
housed 50 sub-directories. Each group only saw 2-3 folders due to Novell
permissions. Now, under 2000 they see ALL 50 folders. I have a large
'older' population that this will confuse. So, We figured it would be
easier to write a logon script which would map based on their folder name.
This way they will only see their 'Human-Resources' folder or 'Group1'
Folder'.

The problem:
Writing a script that will make the Share name available in 'My Network
Places'.
Sure I can go to each workstation and do it manually but that's not
realistic is it!?
Then we'd have to do it each time a group experiences a change.

If you have a way to hide directories from users who do NOT have access to
them PLEASE let me know.
Novell's granular approach was/is nice but I didn't feel like supporting two
different platforms any longer.

Thanks in advance...

Matthew Jones
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Noone]

On my XP client I can rename the connection to whatever I want. For instance
my connection to my data folder says "Data on drive I:" but if I wanted I
could rename it Data. That way when you go through your Word or Excel
program you will see something called Data you can choose. Another way of
doing this would be to setup everyone a Home folder in their profile. Last
time we did that it created a connection and called it Home on the clients.
This gave everyone a place to save their stuff, but they couldn't share
their stuff with anyone else, because they didn't know how.

 

[Richard J. Otter]

Sounds to me that you don't so much want to "map" the share as just create
an entry for it in My Network Places.
Mapping a share, usually implies assigning a drive letter to it. (a feature
left over from DOS days?)
I tried the "net use" command to a share without a drive letter and a
different user. It authenticated the share but it didn't create an entry in
My Network Places.

Good question ! I'd like to do this from the command line too.

Richard

 

[Matthew Jones]

Yes - I had tried it from a command line and works fine.
But, like you said - Nothing in My Network Places.
If you go to my network places and configure it and then do a net use it
shows up just as if you had set it up with a new use.

So the real question is: How do you get 'My Network Places' to recognize it.

I've searched the Registry for an entry created in 'My Network Places' and
have found nothing.

I've searched the hard drive for any file containing the string
'servername\sharname' and found nothing.

Go figure..
Let's see what the other users have to say!

Thanks for the input.

Matthew Jones

 

[Richard J. Otter]

If you're looking for the storage location of the My Network Plaices items,
just look at the user's home directory. There is a hidden directory called
NetHood that has the shortcuts. May the problem is simply how to create a
shortcut from the command line, now that you know where it goes.
Richard