This tutorial will show you how to create a GPO on Windows server to map network drive automatically.
The domain controller is running Windows 2012 R2.
The domain computers are running Windows 7 and Windows 10.
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Tutorial – Creating a GPO to Map Network Drive
Click on the Start menu, locate and open the Group Policy Management tool.
On the Group Policy Management screen, locate the folder named Group Policy Objects.
Right-click the Group Policy Objects folder and select the New option.
Enter a name for your new policy.
In our example, the new GPO was named: MAP NETWORK DRIVE.
On the Group Policy Management screen, expand the folder named Group Policy Objects.
Right-click your new Group Policy Object and select the Edit option.
On the group policy editor screen, you will be presented to User configurations and Computer configurations.
We will change the User configurations to automatically map a shared folder as a network drive.
We don’t need to change any computer configuration.
On the group policy editor screen, expand the User configuration folder and locate the following item.
• User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Drive Maps
Right click on the Drive Maps option and select the New > Mapped drive option.
On the new window, enter the following information:
• The shared folder path to which the network drive should automatically be mapped.
• A label to the network drive.
• Select the drive letter to the new network drive.
Click on the Ok button to finish the configuration.
To finish the group policy creation you need to close the Group policy editor window.
Only when you close the group policy window, the system will save your configuration.
In our example, the shared folder \\TECH-DC01\SHARED will be automatically mapped as drive S.
Tutorial – Applying the GPO to Map a Network Drive
You have finished the creation of the require GPO to map the network drive automatically.
But, you still need to enable the use of your new Group Policy.
On the Group policy management screen, you need to right-click the Organizational Unit desired and select the option to link an existent GPO.
In our example, we are going to link the group policy named MAP NETWORK DRIVE to the root of our domain named TECH.LOCAL.
After applying the GPO you need to wait for 10 or 20 minutes.
During this time the GPO will be replicated to other domain controllers that you might have.
After waiting 20 minutes, you should reboot a user’s computer.
During the boot, the computer will get and apply a copy of the new group policy.
To test the configuration, you need to login on a domain computer and verify if the network drive was automatically mapped.
On My computer screen, the net network drive should be presented as drive S.
