Security on a shared network folder

That's a tough one.  I don't think you're going to get what you really want either :(

I first thought about a bat file they could click on with this in it.
net use y: \\servername\home\%username%

BUT it would try and map the folder with the current username which is generic.
You may be able to possibly write a vb script that will do the same thing except have an input box for them to type in the Shared Folder Name they wish to map to.

Here is an example.
sNewName = ""      'declare a string to hold computername in
'loop while sNewName is null
Do
    sNewName = InputBox("Enter Laptop BarCode","BarCode")
loop While (sNewName="")

'do until the length is less than 6 prepending 0's to the barcode
do while (len(sNewName)<6)
   sNewName = "0" & sNewName
loop

sNewName = "Laptop-" & sNewName            'build the computername

I would think that you could have them login using their network accounts. When they are remote (away from the network) they would just need to login as workstation only or Windows will use their cached credentials.

And yes they can login into a share without giving the generic account
Under Vista you set up a network drive
Just be sure to check off Reconnect at Logon
But underneath you should click on 'Connect using a Different User Name'
This will make them give their network share name and password.

When they start the machine with the generic account
they should get an error type prompt saying that the system cannot connect to a share and to provide credentials.

Good luck

When we try to use the "connect using a different user name" we supply the user and password, but it returns an error saying "The network folder specified is currently mapped using a different user name and password. To connect using a different user name and password, first disconnect any existing mappings to this network share."   We don't have any drives mapped to this folder already, so I'm not sure why its giving us that error.  Ideas?

Are you using target machinename\username?

I used domain\username

So when you do the drop down on the drive letters you don't see that folder mapped elsewhere?


Strange  - I will have to research that.

Nope, there is only one other mapped drive in the drop down, and its to an entirely different server.  Thanks!

I'm pretty positive you can not give everyone separate shares if they are using the same user name, but why not just use the generic user name wit ha number on the end (example: generic1,generic2,generic3, etc....)

That would be very easy because you could give everyone their own username and their own share. You could just make an OU in active directory, apply a group policy with the desired settings, and put all the "generic" accounts in there.

Superfooz74: Giving them their own 'generic' name and number would be the same giving them a userid.  


turtletrax: That is really strange it should work. Does this happen to more than one person's machine you have tried this on?

Back to reading the question again these are mobile users.  Is this an active directory domain as well?  I would suggest whenever possible that you have your mobile users to login to the domain with their domain account/password.  When this takes place you will map each users "home folders" according to ther username.  EX:  \\server\home\%username%

How are they going to get access to their shared folders when they are not on the network?  VPN?  If they cannot log into the domain to get access then they shouldn't be able to get to their shared folder then?

I would stay away from generic logins for audit purposes anyway.

My point is if they can login to the domain then they should because this is where you will have your gpo's and other security policies, drive mappings, etc... will be.

For testing purposes we were trying to make this work from a couple of different PC's that are just on the domain (not remote vpn users).  Each PC was logged on with their unique user.  When trying to map a drive to a folder which that user does not have permissions to, we selected the option to connect using a different user name.  That is when we entered a user which does have permission to the shared folder.  We still get the same error.

The reason we are using one generic account to login to windows is these 75 mobile users switch between laptops depending on which car they are driving.  We dont want to have to setup profiles for every user on every laptop.

Strange, not sure why but using the IP address worked.  Thanks!

Turtletrax: Can you click your way through the network path or type the whole thing in an explorer window?

Your DNS is not fully functional

The strange thing is now that I try it using the name, it also works.  I did reboot that server this morning so perhaps there was just something on the server it was confused about.

To make it easier on the folks, you may want to consider creating a logon batch file that ask for user credentials. It could ask for input and drop in the username and password in the correct place along the command example ed below.

net use [drive letter]: \\netpath\User_Name /USER:passoword\User_name

This way when they boot the machine they can get the drive or skip but when they reboot it goes away so the next person can get prompted. Maybe make the 'autoloader' available on the desktop too.


Good luck - I am glad it was figured out that this was doable and got the correct instructions working.