Mapping Network Drives and Folders In Windows – Accessing Shares

This guide shows you how to connect to drives that are already shared in a windows environment on a home or office network. If there is no drive being shared by another windows computer on your network, this does not apply. If you want to set up a share, follow this guide: “Creating A Shared Folder or Partition in Windows”. If the share is already set up then let’s proceed.

Mapping allows a user to connect to a share (folder or partition) on their network and treat it as if it is natively part of their system. A drive letter will be assigned to a mapped share just as the internal drives, USB drives and other connected storage mediums are. There are many benefits to this that may or may not be familiar or even necessary to you. We won’t get into all that here though.

As a pre-req you must have obtained the Network Path of the share and the correct account logon credentials (user name and password) of the hosting device, otherwise this process will fail. There are many other reasons why this process can fail so if you have problems you may have to check out our “Troubleshooting Network Sharing in Windows” guide and/or get help from a computer admin. With that being said, let’s do it!

1: Open ‘My Computer’ or ‘This PC’

2: Open the ‘Map Network Drive’ window using one of the methods below.

2a: In Windows Explorer, look for ‘Network’ in the folder tree panel on the left. Right-click it and select ‘Map Network Drive…’

or

2b: Expand the ‘Computer’ tab by pressing Alt+C. Then press ‘N’ and click ‘Map Network Drive’.

3: In the Drive section, use the drop-down menu to choose a dedicated drive letter to assign to the share or leave it as is and let Windows manage this for you.

Mapped drives start from Z and work their way to A. I believe this is done so as not to conflict with the actual physical drives that are a part of your system. These drives start from A and work their way to Z.

4: In the “Folder” section, type the network path of the share.

If you don’t have this info, you’re either ahead of yourself or up to no good. 🙂 You must create a shared folder or partition on the system you want to connect to for this info to be populated for sharing. If you haven’t done this yet, use this guide to do so.  The Network Path usually consists of the computer name, followed by the name of the partition or folder you’re connecting to. These are separated with backslashes like so:

Example: \\DEVICE\Shared Folder\

5: Make sure you have the “Reconnect at sign-in” box ticked.

It may say something slightly different like “Reconnect at logon” or something. All the same. Just make sure you have that box checked if you want to stay connected and auto connect when restarting and booting.

6: When all the proper info is entered, click “Finish”.

Windows will attempt to connect to the share. If successful, you should be presented with a security window to input logon credentials.

7: At the Windows Security window, enter the correct username and password.

Understand this. You need to be inputting a username and password that exists on the computer you are trying to connect to. You should NOT be inputting the username and password of the device you are currently using. Many people make this mistake and wonder why the credentials are being rejected.

8: Check the “Remember My Credentials” box if you don’t want to have to re-enter this information each time a connection is made. Otherwise leave it blank. When done press ‘OK’.

If all was done correctly, the drive or folder should now be connected. It will show up under My Computer or This PC along with all your other folders and drives with the letter you assigned to it. The mapped share will be auto-named with the share name and its path. You can right-click a mapped share and rename it to your liking!

Good LUCK!