Non-Physical network drive
 

I have a folder on my harddrive. Lets call it "1 Projects Archive".

This is an archive of past work our office has done (1 Projects of course being current work). How can I make this folder on my C:\ drive have it's own drive letter on the network? I want it to be say, the J:\ drive for everyone's machine. I know this is possible, but can this be done easily in XP Home?

First, navigate to the folder on your computer. Right click and select Sharing. You will need to share the folder.

Next go to the client machines and browse the network. Double click on your machine and you should see the shared folder. Right click the folder and select Map Network Drive. This will bring up a box where you can enter the drive letter. Also make sure you check the reconnect at login box so your users will reconnect to this drive after a reboot.

Yep, unless there's a hack you need Server to force mapping from your side. NT, 2K, 2003, and XP Servers can do it with logon scripts, but not Home.

You could write a little WSH VB/Java and distribute to every machine's global Startup, but just like automount prefs it wouldn't prevent people from unmounting and choosing their own letter.

They can choose there own lettering if they want.

We only have a few people in our office. As this a design office, we work off each others machines constantly.
Becuase we find ourselves plugging old computers from the closet in to find a file, I figured I'd dump all the old files on older out-of-use machines onto my 180gb drive and make it a drive on the network for everyone.

I don't give a hoot what drive letter they give it, as long as it works.
Thanks for the tips. Will be trying this later today. I will post again if something comes up.

Oops, misread the original post.

Create a batch file and install it on everyone's machine. Basically have the batch file say:

net use j: //user1/share1
net use k: //user2/share2

That way, everyone will get the same set of drive mappings.