Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Mapping Network Drives Using Group Policy

Mapping Network Drives Using Group Policy

From: http://www.howtogeek.com/99403/it-how-to-map-network-drives-on-windows-clients-via-group-policy/

Open the Group Policy Management Console by searching for it from the Start Menu.
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You’ll want to drill down into your domain until you reach the Machines object, where you can right-click and choose to Create a GPO.
Note: Although the OU in our example is called the Machines OU it also contains some users. The Group Policy Setting that allows you to map drives is a User setting and is therefore assigned at logon, this means that the OU that you tie the GPO to should contain Users rather than only computers.
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We have to give our new policy a name, we will name ours Mapped Drives (General).
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Now we can right click on the policy and choose edit.
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The policy that controls mapped drives is located at
User Configuration\Preferences\Drive Maps
We need to select the policy and right click in the white space and select new mapped drive.
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Change the action to create, and type a location for your shared folder.
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Now set the label, this is the name that will appear on the drive in my computer. You will also need to choose a drive letter, it is a best practice to choose a static letter across the board, the last thing you need to do is change the radio button at the bottom to Show this drive.
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Now when the users logon the drives will be effortlessly mapped.