Windows – Can a mapped network drive be reconnected from the command line

1. Start / Run / regedit

2. Navigate to the following keys in turn:

   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd
   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd
   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\cmd
   

3. Under each in the right pane you'll see a REG_SZ string value called Extended. Just rename this to something else (in case you want to easily undo the change) or delete it (just that value):

   

4. Now you can simply right-click a drive or directory and have the Command Prompt option show up without having to press Shift.

The Sharepoint WebDAV folder in which I was trying to create the directory was itself linked to an 'Attachments' folder in Sharepoint. Each sub folder was named accordingly to the sharepoint ID number of the associated list.

The error occurred when trying to create a folder directly with a name comprising wholly of numbers. I'm still unsure as to why this might be.

Anyway, the reason it worked in Windows Explorer was that when creating a new directory there, Windows Explorer first creates a folder called "New Folder" and then renames it when you name it.

Trying this manually from the command prompt, i.e. mkdir xxxxx then rename xxxx 11112 demonstrated that it worked ok.

Given that this is WebDAV, all such requests are made through a RESTful API, so it is possible to sniff these with a packet sniffer (I used Fiddler). There I got a more indicative error message (though no more helpful).

Cannot create folder "somefolder/Attachments/1000001"