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How to Remove a Windows 7 Mapped Drive

I haven’t written on here in over a year… I’ve managed to keep wordpress up to date, so go me!!! By no means do I want to make this a “how to site.”

I recently found a quirk with mapped drives, if you’ve lost connection to it, it’s rather difficult to remove…I’ve discovered this issue with my own personalSamba Server, and using Gladinet drive.

If you remove Gradient drive, or you lose connectivity to a Samba Server, Windows throws a fit, and won’t let you disconnect from the drive.  There are some post out there with a command entered at the command line prompt that suggests it will remove the drive.  I found it didn’t work.  The easiest thing I’ve done, is to remap the drive and and then disconnect. You can map the drive to your own computer, and then remove.  It’s really pretty easy.

  • Set your “Network Mode” to Home or Office (Note: This potentially opens you for network attacks, so do this quickly or on a safe network)
  • Go to My Computer > Network > Right Click > Properties > Click “Public Network” and change to Home or Office
  • Make sure your mode isn’t “Public Network”
  • Once you’re on a Home or Office network mode, then click “Computer.”
  • Then “Map network drive”
  • Click here to select the drive
  • Select the drive (using the “Drive:” drop down)you want to get rid of. Windows will give you a warning, about overwriting the current mapping. Click “Yes.”
  • Click Browse, near the “Folder” option. (You’ll need a shared folder on your computer, almost everyone has “Public” folder shared, if you don’t then you’ve disabled it, and wont need help setting up a shared folder, (How-to-Geek has a solid tutorial) just remember;your connecting to your own computer.)
  • Select the drive, that you want to remove. Then select the folder you setup as a share or your “Public” folder.
  • Select a local folder, that you’re sharing. Then click “ok”
  • Now you’ve mapped a local folder to a mapped drive.  Right click, on the mapped drive, and click “Remove.”
  • Poof! No more annoying mapped drive that wont delete.  If you’re on a public network at a cafe, etc, be sure to turn the “Public” mode back on!