Net use command to map network drive in Windows XP and 7

Windows command to map network drive is "net use" and we will use option * which automatically  assign name of drive e.g. X drive, Y drive, Z drive. Now let's see an example of mapping D:\ drive of remote host as windows mapped drive in your desktop:

C:\Documents and Settings\supportUser>net use * \\remoteHost.com\D$ * /u:domain\username

Type the password for \\remoteHost.com\D$:

Drive S: is now connected to \\remoteHost.com\D$.

The command completed successfully.

Now this network folder will be visible as S:\ drive in your My computer as shown below:

Command to show windows mapped network drive

Here is command to show all network drive which is mapped, we will use same net use command without any option to see all drives as shown below:

C:\Documents and Settings\supportUser>net use

New connections will be remembered.

Status       Local     Remote                    Network

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK           A:        \\hostname1\drive1       Microsoft Windows Network

OK           I:        \\hostname1\drive1       Microsoft Windows Network

Disconnected N:        \\hostname3\drive3       Microsoft Windows Network

Unavailable  Z:        \\hostname3\d$           Microsoft Windows Network

The command completed successfully.

Command to disconnect mapped network drive in Windows XP and 7

You can use same command net use to even disconnect mapped network drive, just pass /d argument to net use command for disconnecting mapped network drive as shown below :

C:\Documents and Settings\supportuser>net use /d z:

z: was deleted successfully.

That’s all on windows command to map remote host as network drive in windows XP. As I said using command line to map network drive is much faster than using windows explorer, it prevents your computer from being hung during mapping process. Since net use is one of basic command this trick should also work on other version of Windows operating system e.g. windows 7 or Windows 8. Let me know if you find any other faster way of mapping drives in Windows XP or Windows 7.

Read more: http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2012/12/mapping-network-drive-in-windows-xp-command-net-use.html#ixzz3SFhQNyMF