Cannot access network drive in PowerShell running as administrator

powershell uac unc
EMP picture EMP · Jan 20, 2011 · Viewed 99.4k times · Source

I'm running PowerShell in a Windows 7 x64 virtual machine. I have a shared folder on the host mapped as a network drive (Z:). When I run PS normally I can access that drive just fine, but if I run it "as administrator" it tells me:

Set-Location : Cannot find drive. A drive with the name 'Z' does not exist.
At line:1 char:13
+ Set-Location <<<<  Z:
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (Z:String) [Set-Location], DriveNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DriveNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.SetLocationCommand

How do I access network drives as administrator?

Answer

EMP picture EMP · Jan 24, 2011

In the end the fix was simply to re-map the drive letter while running as Administrator:

net use Z: "\\vmware-host\Shared Folders"

It doesn't have to be done from the same PowerShell instance (or from PowerShell at all) - it's just something that needs to be done once for the entire logon session.

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