I have been running into this a lot with all the Windows 10 upgrades were an older program can not see network drives. The same programs in Windows 7 did not have this problem so I am guessing it is some change that took place after Windows 7.
It seems to happen when you have to run an older program as an administrator. Then when you try to get to a mapped network drive from that program you will not see it. Microsoft must have put some kind of block between the administrator level and the mapped drives. But it is an easy fix. You just have to turn on Linked Connections in the registry.
To Turn On Linked Connections
- Go into the registry and locate and then right-click the registry subkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.
- The vaule is not there by default so most likely you will have to make a new Dword Value
- Name it EnableLinkedConnections, and then press ENTER.
- Right-click EnableLinkedConnections, and then click Modify.
- In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
It should look like this.
After that reboot your computer. Then the next time you open your program that cannot see network drives it should start to work.
I have not seen any bad side effects from this change yet. So as far as I know, it is ok but your environment could be different. As always test it and to be sure.
