HowTo: Use a Drive Letter for a Folder on Your Computer

Windows XP's Map Network Drive function only works with shared folders on your network. So, how can you mount a folder on your computer or a shared folder on an exterrnal drive or flash drive (including the root folder of those drives) as a specified drive letter?

Fortunately, when we use the Map Network Drives... dialog box, the computer we are currently using shows up as one of the computers on the network.

That means that, if we share a folder on our computer, we can map it to a drive letter, even on the same computer. fofun

Few programs today require a specific drive. They usually required you to pick the folder you want on the drive you want.

Mounting a folder your own computer uses the same process as mounting a folder on another computer. First, you have tot "share" the folder. Then, you can use the Mount Network Drive... function.

Here we select the drive letter we want to use for the mapped drive. Then, browse to find the folder we want to mount.

First, we select our own network workgroup ID (mine is "Malvern"). Then, the computer ("Dragon" is the one I'm using) and the specific folder want to mount as the drive letter.


This works best with your internal hard drive(s). I successfully shared and then mounted a flash drive on the same computer. If I did the "safe removal" and reinserted it, it still worked. But, when I rebooted, Windows lost the "shared" status, so it wasn't able to connect.