I was working with a client today and I encountered an error mapping a network drive, so I thought I would share with you the situation along with the way in which I was able to solve it.
So I was trying to map a network drive to a client’s file server so they could more easily access their Quickbooks company files. I went through the motions of opening up the computer via UNC and navigating to the parent directory of the folder I wished to map to. I right clicked on the target folder, selected “Map Network Drive” and filled out the appropriate options and clicked finish. No dice! I received the following error:
The network folder specified is currently mapped using a different user name and password. To connect using a different user name and password, first disconnect any existing mappings to this network share.
Hmmm… I was fairly sure that there were no other mapped drive, but of course I went back and double checked. No drives were mapped. After testing the connectivity to the target machine ( which was good ) I thought that possibly because the target directory was listed in “My Network Places” via the UNC path that it could be causing my problem. After clearing out the “My Network Places” folder I attempted to map the drive again, to the same unsuccessful end.
So I started looking around, trying to google the error message to find solutions. One site, which I did not record and couldn’t find again, suggested making sure that all active connections were cleared via the “net use” command. So I opened up a command prompt and typed “net use”. Ah ha! There were several active connections listed here which were not listed anywhere else ( so far as I could tell ). After checking how I could use the command via “net use /?” I found that I should use the following syntax:
net use /delete \\server\share
As a side note if your share folder includes spaces you must enclose the entire UNC path in quotes:
net use /delete "\\server\shared folder"
After clearing out all of the paths listed in the output of the “net use” command I again attempted to establish the mapped drive. Success!
The client and his mapped drive then lived happily ever after…