Lost Mapped Network drive - XP - how to reinstate

usignuolo · 13 February 2011 at 5:38PM

On our home network we have an elderly PC - "Old PC" - _ which is only used to store historic photos (we run a small DTP based business). We have an XP network and Old PC's C drive is mapped as a network drive on our network (cabled into router).

Recently we had a power failure and it took a bit of fiddling around to get the rest of the network up and running again (basically turning on the devices in the right order) but along the way we have lost access to the mapped drive on Old PC. When we try to access it from our main computer as before, we get a message Network Drive Disconnected.

Old PC is up and running fine and cabled into the router, that did not change. How do we get the network to see it again? Is there a specific set of XP commands and if so what are they and how do we access them?

closed · 13 February 2011 at 6:36PM

depends how it was setup before,(if you have lost/changed any workgroup setting they will have to be recreated), but make sure the drive is still shared on the old pc (right click on directory, sharing), and in explorer on the other pc, tools, map network drive, enter a drive letter, and \\nameofoldpc\sharename

If that's the only thing you use the old pc for, you could just take the hard disk out, and put it in a usb caddy, or a cheap nas enclosure, but why not copy the data across to the new pc (which presumably has a much larger disk), and then buy a usb hard disk (or enclosure) for backup