how do I map a network drive on Win98 without being at network?

I got a question, not sure if it's possible.

I"m upgrading a system from Win95 to Win98 with a fresh install of Win98SE and need to keep mapped drive letters and shared printers.

now I won't be in the LAN place when I work on the laptop..

is there a way to map the drives without actually connecting it to a lan first?

(since I know the network name, and share drive names already, I just want to do setup it from my houes and give it back to my coworker and have it usable as soon as he plug it back to the network)


thanks for the help

Im not sure that you can map a drive without the connection being valid. Even running 'net use' requires a verification prior to making it a mapped drive.

You might be able to hack the registry but that is not exactly a great thing to do.

Why would you want the mapping there if you cannot access the drives??? Why not just wait until the target returns and then run the maps?

While I don't know of an easy way to "pre-map" drives & whatnot, you could write a batch file with NET USE commands so the user can easily re-map their network drives once the system is back on the LAN.

About the printers, though... I don't know.

If you go into the Registry and find (or create) the Key 'HKCU\Network\Persistent' it will contain subKeys within it with the network drives which automatically get mapped on startup. They are named after the drive letter which you want mapped (eg. a key named E if you're mapping to drive E:\).

Within there you need a String titled RemotePath and it's data set to the path (eg. "\\RootFolder\MyFolder").

If you set those Strings after you've completed the setup the network drives should be mapped on a restart.

cool, I'll remember that for next time .

I went to the office just to make sure ..

thanks anyway