All drives letter automatically mapped to same share
We have a client with an issue the same as the unanswered post in the following thread: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/itprovistanetworking/thread/44f53296-2d5c-402a-b505-2e6f1f28d2ac the difference being our customer has Windows 7 Professional. Basically, all drives, unless mapped already, are getting mapped to the same share until eventually all letters F through Z are mapped. It is completely random so we're having a tough time tracking down the cause. Some older posts we've found said Findfast from Office 97 caused this. However, this PC is < 1 yr old running Win 7 Pro and Office 2010 Pro Plus. There is a Group Policy that runs a script on logon to map only 3 drives. We've checked the registry setting for Persistent Connections and have basically tried everything we've found with no resolution. Our next attempt was going to be deleting the user's profile and creating a new one but thought we'd post a question and see if anyone else has other ideas. Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated! Thanks, Jason
January 28th, 2012 9:45am

When you map your network drives are you mapping to a specific letter or are you picking any free letter on the go. I would suggest that you update your logon script to loop through all available drive letters for mapping and delete all mapped network drives. Then the script should map only the 3 drives in questions. Another thing to check is MountPoints2 in registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2 You may have to do some deleting in here for entries like “##AnyIPAddress#f$” or “##ServerName#Folder”
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January 28th, 2012 10:08am

We're mapping to specific letters. The issue occurs after the users are already logged on so I think it's something other than the logon script. I'll look at the registry key. Thanks for the suggestions.
January 28th, 2012 10:20am

Follow-up: we have determined this is an issue with Pictures Library. For some reason, folders on a mapped network drive are being added to this library from the regular I: mapped drive. Not sure how they are being added though because trying to add one manually produces the error about this drive not being indexed. So we know it's not the actual user adding them. These users do take pictures with digital cameras and connect them to the PC for transfer and use Windows Live Photo Gallery to manage. Doing some further testing to re-produce the error. Anyone else have ideas? Thanks!
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January 28th, 2012 2:00pm

See if this helps http://www.petri.co.il/remove-libraries-and-favorites-from-windows-explorer.htm
January 28th, 2012 3:28pm

Brano, Don't think so...it's actually the folders are being added to the Pictures Library automatically either from the procedure the users are going through when transferring pictures or editing them with Windows Live Photo Gallery. See note in that article you referenced: "Note: This tweak will only remove them from the Explorer view, it will NOT disable them totally." We've removed the folders from the library and are waiting for the user to tell us if they re-appear.
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January 28th, 2012 3:49pm

Any update? It seems the pictures are automatically added into Library when editing. When you connect the nework drive, ensure it's not included in the gallery. Choose to import the pictures from the camera or scanner when use Gallery to edit them. Then see the result. Regards, Miya TechNet Subscriber Support If you are TechNet Subscription user and have any feedback on our support quality, please send your feedback here. Miya Yao TechNet Community Support
January 30th, 2012 10:03pm

This issue apparently was caused by Windows Live Photo Gallery, a digital camera, and Windows 7 Pictures Library. This occurred on 3 different computers with all 3 the same OS, using Photo Gallery, and digital cameras (different cameras), so I would say it's a "bug" with Windows Live Photo Gallery. Their business requires them to take digital photos of electronic components for testing & verification purposes. They would then connect the digitial camera to their PCs to download pictures using Windows Live Photo Gallery and directly store them on the network share which was mapped as I: drive initially. Windows Live Photo Gallery was automatically adding each folder to the Pictures Library - this is where I think the bug is - the mapped drive I: is on a Windows 2003 server and is not indexed. Trying to add any of these folders manually through right-mouse clicking on Pictures Library produces an error about the drive not being indexed. There were several folders in the Pictures Library on all 3 users' computers - I recall reading the limit is 100 folders in Pictures Library, I didn't count but it appeared there were 100 folders on all 3 computers - we removed these folders from Pictures Library and told the users to transfer directly to their PCs first from the cameras then copy over to the I: drive. As of today (1 week) the issue hasn't re-occurred. We didn't continue to trouble-shoot to see if a certain indexing process or something else was actually mapping the drives or at what point but it certainly appears to be fixed due to a change in their process. I would be interested know if someone on the dev team for Windows Live Photo Gallery and/or Windows' Picture Library feature could trouble-shoot this and find a fix or provide an update as our client now has an extra step in their business process. However, we do have a work-around that doesn't take that much extra time and our client is happy not to see 20+ mapped drives when they open Windows Explorer or My Computer. Thanks for everyone's suggestion and help!
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February 3rd, 2012 1:14pm

How's it going? Please feel free to give us any update. Regards, Miya TechNet Subscriber Support If you are TechNet Subscription user and have any feedback on our support quality, please send your feedback here.Miya Yao TechNet Community Support
February 3rd, 2012 9:55pm

This issue apparently was caused by Windows Live Photo Gallery, a digital camera, and Windows 7 Pictures Library. This occurred on 3 different computers with all 3 the same OS, using Photo Gallery, and digital cameras (different cameras), so I would say it's a "bug" with Windows Live Photo Gallery. Their business requires them to take digital photos of electronic components for testing & verification purposes. They would then connect the digitial camera to their PCs to download pictures using Windows Live Photo Gallery and directly store them on the network share which was mapped as I: drive initially. Windows Live Photo Gallery was automatically adding each folder to the Pictures Library - this is where I think the bug is - the mapped drive I: is on a Windows 2003 server and is not indexed. Trying to add any of these folders manually through right-mouse clicking on Pictures Library produces an error about the drive not being indexed. There were several folders in the Pictures Library on all 3 users' computers - I recall reading the limit is 100 folders in Pictures Library, I didn't count but it appeared there were 100 folders on all 3 computers - we removed these folders from Pictures Library and told the users to transfer directly to their PCs first from the cameras then copy over to the I: drive. As of today (1 week) the issue hasn't re-occurred. We didn't continue to trouble-shoot to see if a certain indexing process or something else was actually mapping the drives or at what point but it certainly appears to be fixed due to a change in their process. I would be interested know if someone on the dev team for Windows Live Photo Gallery and/or Windows' Picture Library feature could trouble-shoot this and find a fix or provide an update as our client now has an extra step in their business process. However, we do have a work-around that doesn't take that much extra time and our client is happy not to see 20+ mapped drives when they open Windows Explorer or My Computer. Thanks for everyone's suggestion and help!
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February 4th, 2012 5:11am

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