Unable to connect to Network Drive Assigned by GPO on VPN (Mounting Drive Path Manually Works)

Question

Recently, users on our domain are no longer able to connect to network shares that are mounted/assigned a drive via GPO when connected to a VPN.

The shares can, however, be accessed if they are mapped manually to a drive letter that is not used by GPO. For example:

Drive assigned by GPO: K:\servername\examplefolder. --Does not work

Drive manually mounted Z:\servername\examplefolder --Works

No settings were adjusted in GPO, DNS or on the DC.

The issue is only occurring for VPN connections setup on Windows devices.

Thanks for any ideas you may have!

Answer 1

Try using:

pushd \machine\share
within a batch file of your scheduled task. Network shared drives are only available from a user-run environment. "pushd" will allow it to be run in the context of the script.

When you're done use:

popd \machine\share
to unmap the drive.

Reference: https://blog.adrianbanks.co.uk/windows/2007/03/08/accessing-network-file-shares-from-a-command-prompt.html

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Hope this information can help you

Best wishes
Vicky

Answer 2

@Vicky Wang Thank you so much for taking the time to reply.

I have a couple of follow up questions

1. Any idea why this is happening over VPN but not on site, on the domain/private LAN?
2. Are you suggesting I run these commands from the User Configuration>Preferences>Control Panel Settings>Scheduled Tasks of the GPO that is mounting these shares for the user?

Thanks for clarifying!

Answer 3

Hi,

》》Are you suggesting I run these commands from the User Configuration>Preferences>Control Panel Settings>Scheduled Tasks of the GPO that is mounting these shares for the user?

According to my knowledge, this is ok. thank you very much for your patience

Best wishes

Vicky

Answer 4

Hi,

Just checking in to see if the information provided was helpful.

Please let us know if you would like further assistance.

Best Regards,
Vicky

Answer 5

My apologies,
I meant to find time to test this last week, but not able. I discovered a workaround where I have the user mount the path to the network shares on a different drive letter when connecting with a VPN. Disconnecting and remounting to the same drive letter that is assigned by GPO results in the same error.

I wish I could figure out why the path signed by GPO is not available over VPN but is available on the LAN.

Will be sure to follow up.

Thanks again!