Do shared network drives not connect at bootup until accessed in Explorer?

[pcGnome]

I use 'winkey' to indicate that key between the ctrl and alt keys.
Things are problematic if you logon without a password, so create one.
From a 286 win95 to my current LGA2011 Win7 ...
I cannot stop that red x for shared drives on bootup until selected in explorer.
This means I cannot have anything access them before I do this.
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Microsoft is real cagey about this, but the most reasonable explanation I've seen is that Windows tries to connect shares before networking is completely started. You may note they are real cagey about a lot of things (like their tendency to say "it worked in the last Windows version, so let's change it"). The supreme court has a 'precedent' policy, Microsoft has the exact opposite, I don't know why.
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But I found a fix and the only catch is that if you have "Restore previous folder windows at logon ON" checked, it may do this before the fix and then the fix asks stupid questions at boot up. I recommend unchecking it and winkey-e to open explorer as needed after boot up. you find the checkbox to uncheck in explorer (tools - folder options - view).
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I'm assuming you actually have wires and router (or equivalent) physically connecting two or more computers. If not, none of this is of any use to you.
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I'm assuming you know how to share drives / drives\folders across your LAN (Local Area Network) - if not, just ask. Slightly different for different flavors of Windows.
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For simplicity, I'm assuming you are sharing 'c:\temp' as d: on the other machine with the share name of 'D'.
I'm also assuming a username of 'Administrator', change to your username for the examples below.
I'm also assuming the machine names (winkey-pause [usually three keys to the right of F12] to see) are Fred and Wilma, change to actual names below.
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In a batch file (notepad, save as "connect.bat" WITH quotes [some windows versions will create "connect.bat.txt" if you don't]).
Place this batch file in the startup folder under 'program files' or 'all program files' below the start button on the task bar.
Usually you can right click on the startup folder and choose 'explore' to access it easiest for placing the batch file within.
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For Wilma, in win7, connect.bat contains (the '[*]' says 'use current password'):
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net use D: /delete
net use D: \\Fred\D /user:Administrator[*] /persistent:yes
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In WinXP, connect.bat contains:
net use D: /delete
net use D: \\Fred\D /persistent:yes
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And on Fred,
In win7, connect.bat contains (the '[*]' says 'use current password'):
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net use D: /delete
net use D: \\Wilma\D /user:Administrator[*] /persistent:yes
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In WinXP, connect.bat contains:
net use D: /delete
net use D: \\Wilma\D /persistent:yes
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The reason you have to delete it is that your share is incomplete, but there to interfere with reconnecting it with the 'net use' command.
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Anyway, this should solve most problems. One potential problem still remains: if you want to use this with some program also in your startup folder, Windows NEVER has decided which items to run first, so if there are two batch files (this one and the one you want to work across the network), place the commands for the other batch file after this in 'connect.bat' or the commands for 'connect.bat' at the top of the other batch file.
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Feel free to experime nt (placing a 'pause' command at the end of "connect.bat" will let you see everything without the CLI window closing at bootup)
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Enjoy,
pcG

[Krispy Kritter]

I've not seen that issue from a cold start. The only time I see the drive not connected error (ie: red x), is after the PC has been asleep. Any mapped drives should be found and accessible after booting (assuming the drives are reachable) as they are scanned as part of the boot process (not the waking process).

[pcGnome]

Well, I cannot speak for anyone else, but forever on many different machines with many different versions of Windows, upon boot up, any shared drives across my LAN ALWAYS show the red X. In past, I always have to open up Explorer and select the not-quite-connected drive in the left pane and the red X disappears. Before that, from a program or even from a CLI (dos window, cmd.exe, etc ...), the system will not find it. Yes, such scanning takes place at boot up, but if it scans prior to establishing networking, it will fail and produce the red X. I've never seen it NOT produce the red X for shares across my LAN on boot up.
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This batch file could be run and reconnect after waking as well, I'd presume (create a shortcut from the bat file in startup or where ever you keep it and put the shortcut in quick launch for easy access (or just put the batch file or a copy of it in quick launch if you like).
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Presumably you could bypass the whole "map network drive" by issuing the 'net use' command from dos or even in the run box. As a one shot, use "/persistent:no". The net commands can be quite useful in a lot of circumstances.
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pcG

[jagabo]

I rarely get the red x for mapped network drives. I've been doing this for many years starting with Windows 95 up through Windows 10. All my computers currently have drive G: mapped to a share on my NAS (all my portable software resides there).

[Bjs]

Win 3 to win 7 ... via direct cable never an issue

But if via router check and add additional firewall rules for network shares.

[Nelson37]

common problem. Been using similar batch files for years. Not certain what causes this, some networks experience it, others don't. Mix of PC's and operating systems common on most networks I service.

Problem most definitely occurs on cold start, as well as sleep mode.

I call it "mapit.bat". BTW, using the letter "D" for a mapped drive is bad form as this is a drive letter highly likely to be used on the PC itself, mapped drives traditionally start with "F" or higher.

[Cornucopia]

At my last IT gig, I did basically what Nelson37 does but attached it to the AD's Logon GP attribute (actually, un-mapping, then re-mapping to make sure it's refreshed). Pretty much ensured it made all the links "green" within seconds.

Scott

[pcGnome]

BTW, using the letter "D" for a mapped drive is bad form as this is a drive letter highly likely to be used on the PC itself, mapped drives traditionally start with "F" or higher.

Duly noted. I actually find D: generally is the CD/DVD drive and if unused, defaults to E:
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Somewhere else, having used "Fred" and "Wilma" as examples, I used "Pebbles" as the share name. I only used 'D' in the example to keep it as simple as possible. I hope I was clear that the names I used in the example should be replaced with actual names on their machines, which could be anything as presumably the share names already exist and nobody would likely be using my example from scratch so I doubt it's going to be a problem for anyone.
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But between what you said and this response, I think there's little chance of anyone getting it wrong, else, they should ask here and you or I could make it clear.
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Thank you,
pcG

[Nelson37]

As a tidbit of trivia, if you still have a floppy drive, it is BOTH A-drive, AND B-drive. That was so you could do a disk-to-disk copy with one drive. It is still why nothing uses letter B.

One of the most nearly useless pieces of information I recall, along with g=c800:5. MFM format debug command.

[jagabo]

A second floppy drive would use B. In the DOS days I always had two floppy drives. Copying discs was much easier that way. Most computers didn't have enough memory to copy a double sided floppy with a single swap.

[pcGnome]

Technically you're wrong on one point. While against convention and all sensibility, you can in fact assign ANY drive to A and ' or B in disk management.

Well, I go back quite a ways. Was a devout Apple user until they stole my slots with that idiot MAC thing. At that time, the first drive (because it needed a controller card) cost $450, and while the second drive was only $250 ... still above my budget at the time. Luckily, I worked in an engineering dept. that had old drive shells and engineers that had the obsolete roms and I built my own. Boy, the days when you could stop a mistaken devastating command by just opening the floppy drive before any actual writing took place. And it was so superior to that whole data cassette thing (mighty cheap tho).
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But it's all been awhile and I barely remember the economy of disk copy with a single drive when things were expensive ... the MFM thing's is a bit hazy, but I remember DOS 4.0 and breaking the magical 32MB barrier. Boy, drive space went cheap after that - 100MB drives for a $100 ... heh ... yea, I'm really old. And getting a prized RLL card to see if my MFM drive could be made reliable for 1/3 more disk space (usually not). I remember hearing "if it doesn't have a false floor, it isn't really a computer".
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pcG

[Nelson37]

I remember RLL'ing my first drive to get 30 MB total. 10 entire MEGAbytes, Free! Wow!

You can use A: and B: for other drives, but it's just wrong. I didn't say you couldn't. This one doesn't really matter anymore, but shared drives below F: will cause a problem sooner rather than later.

Two floppy drives was the super deluxe version, we upgraded to 384K RAM instead.

I remember installing individual little 8-legged memory chips, what a PITA.

Ah, storage disks melting in the Florida sun, the good old days.