As a LAN administrator, there are times when you have a requirement to map a network drive (s) for domain users.
The preferred method for mapping network drives for domain users is Group Policy Preferences (GPP). I won't repeat the steps for accomplishing this here as Ned Pyle has written a great blog post, Using Group Policy Preferences to Map Drives Based on Group Membership, on how to achieve this.
GPP client side extensions are available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, but they first need be installed. These client side extensions can be configured from computers running post Windows Server 2003 (Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista) operating systems . This means you must have a computer running a post Windows Server 2003 operating system to configure these new settings. You can download the client side extensions from the following location, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943729.
If you don't have GPP installed for Windows Server 2003 and/or Windows XP, you can use the following steps to map a network drive using Group Policy:
A quick way to do this is to use a log on script.
- Create a shared folder name sales. For our example, this folder will reside on a server named server01.
- Open notepad and type, net use x: \\server01\sales.
- Save the file with a .bat extension.
- Paste the batch file into the into the sysvol folder in the following location C:\Windows\SYSYVOL\sysvol\<domainname>\scripts (or the drive\location that you designated for the SYSVOL folder during dcpromo).
References
This article was derived from the DS forum post, http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverDS/thread/7db4b7a7-bacf-45f7-9902-0f90bc48aa4f.
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