Unable to map drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jonathan Finney
  • Start date Start date
J

Jonathan Finney

I have 3 PCs on a Win2K PTP network. All machines are virtually identical
with a few differences in the installed software. The OS and Office apps on
all PCs are regularly updated.

There are two printers also connected to the network (not locally to any
PC), one of which is an HP PSC 2100 all-in-one device with a card reader.

Despite many problems with the HP Director software, I now have a fully
functional installation on all machines except one on which everything works
OK (printing, scanning, faxing, etc.) except that the card reader is showing
as disconnected from this machine which means I can't transfer pictures to
this machine (which is, of course, the one I want use for the transfer).

When installing the HP Director software, the installation maps drive letter
Z: to the card reader to enable the device and program to communicate. The
problem is that on one PC, the mapping fails as Windows, for some unknown
reason, prompts me for a password. As no password has ever been specified,
there is no way to get past this point and I have to cancel and ask Windows
not to log on to this drive in future (otherwise the same thing happens
again).

I suspected that the software installation was the culprit, but I have spent
many hours trying to sort this out with the top engineers at HP UK who say
the only solution now is to reinstall the OS(!!)

One of the ironic things is that the first installation of the HP Director
software was on this machine and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately, there
were many problems with the installation on the other machines that were
subsequently resolved by installing a newer version of the software, but PC0
has always failed to allow the card reader to be mapped. I have, of course,
tried many complete installations including a couple of attempts after
manually uninstalling everything (this is a tedious job that takes several
hours!).

The reason for posting this here is that I'm now convinced it's a Windows
problem (which I could prove by reinstalling from scratch!) and I was hoping
for some advice or pointers.

I have tried mapping the drive manually, but I get an error message saying
the network path \\NPICF2C5F\memory_card could not be found. I am able to
map other drive letters to the card reader on the other PCs using this
procedure, so I now consider that this is a Windows problem that affects
only this machine.

Can anybody help or suggest what could be causing this problem?
 
Jonathan Finney said:
I have 3 PCs on a Win2K PTP network. All machines are virtually identical
with a few differences in the installed software. The OS and Office apps on
all PCs are regularly updated.

There are two printers also connected to the network (not locally to any
PC), one of which is an HP PSC 2100 all-in-one device with a card reader.

Despite many problems with the HP Director software, I now have a fully
functional installation on all machines except one on which everything works
OK (printing, scanning, faxing, etc.) except that the card reader is showing
as disconnected from this machine which means I can't transfer pictures to
this machine (which is, of course, the one I want use for the transfer).

When installing the HP Director software, the installation maps drive letter
Z: to the card reader to enable the device and program to communicate. The
problem is that on one PC, the mapping fails as Windows, for some unknown
reason, prompts me for a password. As no password has ever been specified,
there is no way to get past this point and I have to cancel and ask Windows
not to log on to this drive in future (otherwise the same thing happens
again).

I suspected that the software installation was the culprit, but I have spent
many hours trying to sort this out with the top engineers at HP UK who say
the only solution now is to reinstall the OS(!!)

One of the ironic things is that the first installation of the HP Director
software was on this machine and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately, there
were many problems with the installation on the other machines that were
subsequently resolved by installing a newer version of the software, but PC0
has always failed to allow the card reader to be mapped. I have, of course,
tried many complete installations including a couple of attempts after
manually uninstalling everything (this is a tedious job that takes several
hours!).

The reason for posting this here is that I'm now convinced it's a Windows
problem (which I could prove by reinstalling from scratch!) and I was hoping
for some advice or pointers.

I have tried mapping the drive manually, but I get an error message saying
the network path \\NPICF2C5F\memory_card could not be found. I am able to
map other drive letters to the card reader on the other PCs using this
procedure, so I now consider that this is a Windows problem that affects
only this machine.

Can anybody help or suggest what could be causing this problem?
Click to expand...

Even though you write that no password has ever been specified, this
is incorrect: Every Win2000 installation requires you to enter a password
at install time. This might be a blank password but it still is a password.

I assume that you operate in a "workgroup" environment, not in a
"domain" environment, and that all your PCs run Win2000. I also assume
that you know the password for the administrator's account on the
card reader. I now suggest that you perform these tests:

On a "good" PC:
1. Start a Command Prompt.
2. Type this: net use * /del /y
3. Type this: net use x: \\CardReader\YourShare
/user:CardReader\administrator
You will be prompted for the administrator's password.

Does drive x: get mapped to your card reader share?

Now repeat the same test on the bad PC. What happens?
 
Back
Top