Drive mapping with no user logged in?

[vidarz]

Hopefully a stupid question. There is no way to map a drive on a system without a user being logged in, is there?

We have a software vendor claiming we need to map a drive and run a service as a domain account in order to access a samba share. As far as I know (and have been able to find) there is no way to map a drive when no one is logged in. You have to use the UNC path to access any share. And all the mapping is doing is assigning a drive letter to the UNC path anyway so why they think that is beyond me.

The idea of a drive mapping with no one logged in is intriguing, so I wouldn't mind being wrong, but being right is good too. Not one of my favorite vendors Thanks in advance for any response.

 

[sparkbyte]

Technicaly no, that I know of. Here is the caviot though.

NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM is a user account that can logon as a service.

NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK is simular but has access to the network.

I use this inside a Bat file to copy and rename files to show an example.

pushd \\lxolXXXXX01\ftp0371$
copy /Y /V /D Hbbpbc*.* E:\MooreBCS\
copy /Y /V /D Hbbpbc*.* E:\MooreBCS\Archive\%datestr%-%timestr%_Hbbpbc*.*
REN Hbbpbc*.* Sav_%datestr%-%timestr%_Hbbpbc*.*
popd

I have run this under both ID's. What is strange though is that the Rename won't work when run through scheduler as either ID. It will work when run under a domain account. I have to assume this is because the NT AUTHORITY accounts are local and rights don't pass to remote shares.

Hope this helps


Thanks

John Fuhrman
Titan Global Services

http://www.titangs.com

 

[Roadki11]

You can map the drive with a simple batch file and using scheduled tasks to execute the bat file when the system starts. i had to do this for a 3rd party app that required it also, no clue why it helped the app work but it did.

RoadKi11