Map a network drive to be used by a service

Use this at your own risk. (I have tested it on XP and Server 2008 x64 R2)

For this hack you will need SysinternalsSuite by Mark Russinovich:

Step one: Open an elevated cmd.exe prompt (Run as administrator)

Step two: Elevate again to root using PSExec.exe: Navigate to the folder containing SysinternalsSuite and execute the following command psexec -i -s cmd.exe you are now inside of a prompt that is nt authority\system and you can prove this by typing whoami. The -i is needed because drive mappings need to interact with the user

Step Three: Create the persistent mapped drive as the SYSTEM account with the following command net use z: \\servername\sharedfolder /persistent:yes

It's that easy!

WARNING: You can only remove this mapping the same way you created it, from the SYSTEM account. If you need to remove it, follow steps 1 and 2 but change the command on step 3 to net use z: /delete.

NOTE: The newly created mapped drive will now appear for ALL users of this system but they will see it displayed as "Disconnected Network Drive (Z:)". Do not let the name fool you. It may claim to be disconnected but it will work for everyone. That's how you can tell this hack is not supported by M$.

You'll either need to modify the service, or wrap it inside a helper process: apart from session/drive access issues, persistent drive mappings are only restored on an interactive logon, which services typically don't perform.

The helper process approach can be pretty simple: just create a new service that maps the drive and starts the 'real' service. The only things that are not entirely trivial about this are:

• The helper service will need to pass on all appropriate SCM commands (start/stop, etc.) to the real service. If the real service accepts custom SCM commands, remember to pass those on as well (I don't expect a service that considers UNC paths exotic to use such commands, though...)

• Things may get a bit tricky credential-wise. If the real service runs under a normal user account, you can run the helper service under that account as well, and all should be OK as long as the account has appropriate access to the network share. If the real service will only work when run as LOCALSYSTEM or somesuch, things get more interesting, as it either won't be able to 'see' the network drive at all, or require some credential juggling to get things to work.

You could us the 'net use' command:

var p = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("net.exe", "use K: \\\\Server\\path");
var isCompleted = p.WaitForExit(5000);

If that does not work in a service, try the Winapi and PInvoke WNetAddConnection2

Edit: Obviously I misunderstood you - you can not change the sourcecode of the service, right? In that case I would follow the suggestion by mdb, but with a little twist: Create your own service (lets call it mapping service) that maps the drive and add this mapping service to the dependencies for the first (the actual working) service. That way the working service will not start before the mapping service has started (and mapped the drive).

I find a very simple method: using command "New-SmbGlobalMapping" of powershell, which will mount drive globally:

$User = "usernmae"
$PWord = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "password" -AsPlainText -Force
$creds = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $User, $PWord
New-SmbGlobalMapping -RemotePath \\192.168.88.11\shares -Credential $creds -LocalPath S:

You wan't to either change the user that the Service runs under from "System" or find a sneaky way to run your mapping as System.

The funny thing is that this is possible by using the "at" command, simply schedule your drive mapping one minute into the future and it will be run under the System account making the drive visible to your service.

Instead of relying on a persistent drive, you could set the script to map/unmap the drive each time you use it:

net use Q: \\share.domain.com\share 
forfiles /p Q:\myfolder /s /m *.txt /d -0 /c "cmd /c del @path"
net use Q: /delete

This works for me.