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Mapping a Network Drive on Your Windows 10 PC

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|  Updated:  
2016-03-26 07:12:36
|   From The Book:  
PCs & Laptops For Dummies
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If you find yourself accessing a shared network folder all the time, consider mapping that folder to a drive letter in your PC’s mass storage system. Just follow these steps:

  1. Press Win + E to open a File Explorer window.

  2. In Windows 10, choose This PC from the left side of the window.

    This step isn’t necessary in Windows 7, because you already see the My Computer window. Like the This PC window, it lists local storage and network locations.

  3. In Windows 10, click the Computer tab.

  4. Click the Map Network Drive button.

    The Map Network Drive dialog box appears.

  5. Choose a drive letter.

    Pick something from the list of available letters. You might want to consider using something high-up so that the mapped network drive won’t interfere with any removable storage you add to your PC.

  6. Click the Browse button.

    A mini network window appears, listing available storage devices on the network. These are locations flagged for shared folders.

  7. Select a network computer or server and then a shared folder.

  8. Type the username and password to access the network resource.

    You must have an account on the other computer, or know the username and password, to map a shared folder.

  9. Ensure that the Reconnect at Sign-in (or Logon) option is checked.

  10. Click the Finish button.

You see a new “drive” appear in the window, one with the letter you assigned in Step 5. Opening this drive icon displays the contents of the shared folder on the network.

About This Article

This article is from the book: 

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.