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Jason Kresowaty
Asked: 2012-03-29 08:44:16 +0800 CST

Persistent network share connection not working with runas

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If I use runas /user:DOMAIN\user cmd.exe (using XP), previously mapped persistent network drives are considered unavailable. net use shows:

Status       Local     Remote                    Network
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unavailable  H:        \\SERVER\SHARE            Microsoft Windows Network

dir H: fails with "The system cannot find the path specified.".

The connection is easily revived with `NET USE H: \SERVER\SHARE': not asked for a password when I do this. What is going on? Can I make Windows safely revive this drive automatically when it is first accessed.

network-share windows-xp

1 Answers

  1. Doing a runas does not load a user's profile by default, you might have more luck when supplying the /profile option to runas. You also might be running into the problem that mapped drives connected in a specific user's context are unavailable to others. Quoting from the MSDN documentation for Windows XP:

    Drive letters are not global to the system. Each logon session receives its own set of drive letters from A to Z. Therefore, redirected drives cannot be shared between processes running under different user accounts. Moreover, a service (or any process running within its own logon session) cannot access the drive letters that were established within a different logon session.

    Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms685143(v=vs.85).aspx

    This is by design and cannot be changed.

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