2017 Not finding network drives

[rgorman]

This has been a recurring issue with the last 3 installs (2012, 2015 and now 2017). The installation/create deployment portion doesn NOT show the normal mapped drives ("G:/" and subdirectories, for example) when trying to access location for Admin Image path, support directories and the like. Even the actual network itself doesn't show up in the list when I choose "Network"

Yes, I CAN use the "network path" type of entry to establish locations, and it is accepted (apparently) but that is a pain in the butt. I get around that by creating a list on a txt document in notepad of all the drives and directories I need, then copy and paste into the entry locations as needed.

I guess my question is "Why?". It is such a palaver to go this route instead of just clicking on the actual directory I need. Once it is installed, I can go to the support files in the Options and have NO issues accessing those network directories.

[TravisNave · Accepted solution]

It is not advised to use mapped drives to install a network deployment.  You should be using the UNC path \\servername\share.  This is the correct way to do it.  Mapped drives cause all sorts of problems that can be avoided by simply using UNC paths.  UNC paths work on any machine and is not dependent on the path being mapped properly.  Hope that helps.

Good Luck!

[rgorman]

See? was that so hard? In ALL the previous times I brought his up, THAT was never the reason given. And it makes sense. It's better than the "oh, you may not have access...." or "there must be something wrong with your installation...", etc... that I have received in the past.

And I thank you for the explanation. HOWEVER... The "servername" has NEVER appeared in the listing of available networks. And we have a LOT of them here. Using the servername path system WORKS despite this. 

This is why I need to create a txt file with all the location strings I need so I can copy and paste into each location as required.

[Anonymous]

We use drive letters because we have several offices and we don't want to create a deployment for each office because the UNC would be different. Installing over our network would be impractical. We store the deployments on a NAS and also have USB drives that we can change the drive letter.  It has worked great until windows 10. The mapped drive don't seem to work but the USB drives with the drive letter assigned works. I was wondering if anyone else has had this issue. The setup just keeps initializing. 

[Anonymous]

@TravisNave  I am in the process of troubleshooting a thrid party AutoCAD Plugin called Land F/X. They are claiming that mapped drives solve problems, not cause them.

"Due to recent Microsoft Security increases, the use of XML files (critical to Land F/X) can be stopped over a UNC path. Anything other than a direct C:\LandFX folder location should have a mapped letter drive. Using a mapped letter drive instead of a full UNC path prevents issues in CAD for a number of reasons. For one, if you decide to move the server or change the server name, it will break UNC paths (e.g., \\servername\LandFX), whereas a mapped letter drive can be simply overwritten to point to a new location. UNC paths can also cause problems with uninstall packages when the network location is no longer available."

 I know your previous post was from a few years ago. Would you change your response in 2019? Do you still prefer to use UNC pathing?

[TravisNave]

The UNC pathing is only relevant in the deployment source and has no
bearing on anything other than installation. Leave it to Microsoft to
break on standard network rules.