Easy Access to Network Shares

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Easy Access to Network Shares

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• Relates to: MCSE 2000 | MCSE 2003 | MCSA 2000 | MCSA 2003

I don't know if this tip's been mentioned before,
but it's so useful I thought it should be mentioned
again.

By using Microsoft Word's built in (and default)
ability to recognize html addresses and UNC's,
there's a way to make accessing network shares much
easier than hunting through network neighborhood or
even through pre-mapped drives from your login script.

I created a document called Connections.doc and in
it, I typed out the fully qualified domain name of
many of the shares I use on a daily basis.

For example, I have a large hard drive on my computer
that stores the installation files for all of the
programs we have (Office, Photoshop, NT's I386 directory,
etc.) Instead of mapping a drive to that location on
every computer I go to, I simply type this in my
Connections.doc

\\mark_s_hart\install\

I've done that for many of the shares in other domains
as well, and it works great! - much faster than hunting
for the share and much easier as well.

This also works very well for executables like a service
pack update

\\mark_s_hart\install\system\nt\sp5\update\updtate.exe

This works really well for someone with a roaming profile.
Keep this Connections.doc in your home directory and have a
shortcut on your roaming desktop.
That way it'll always be there when you need it, but your
profile will have only one icon that it needs for all your
network shares which keeps the profile size to a minimum.

When I had these mappings in my login script, it really
slowed login time to a crawl because it had to connect to
each share, and then move on to the next. But, by putting
them in a connections.doc and accessing that file once
you're connected to the network, the link to that install
folder opens up VERY quickly! - you're already authenticated
to the network, so it just goes about its business.