Creating a symbolic link to mapped network drive in Windows

Question

I am having an issue creating a symbolic link on Windows 7 Ultimate. I want to map a folder from a mapped network drive into My Documents.

mklink /D "C:\Users\Vegard\Documents\Virtual Machines" "Z:\Virtual Machines" returns You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation..

Z:\Virtual Machines is set to be available offline, but I am online when I am trying this.

This is what I've tried (as suggested here):

1. Using Local Security Policy to add my user to Local Polices\User Rights Assignments\Create symbolic links, and rebooting. No luck.

2. Running cmd.exe as an Administrator, but then I cannot see the mapped network drive at all. I can however create symbolic links on the drive.

3. Using fsutil to change symlinkevaluation, to set R2L:1 (even though it seem to me I want L2R, which is already enabled).

4. Using full UNC path of the shared folder does not work either (The syntax of the command is incorrect. when run as an administrator, You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation. when run as a normal user).

Output of fsutil behavior query symlinkevaluation:

C:\Windows\system32>fsutil behavior query symlinkevaluation
Local to local symbolic links are enabled.
Local to remote symbolic links are enabled.
Remote to local symbolic links are enabled.
Remote to remote symbolic links are disabled.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

My solution became to disable User Account Control, reboot, then create the symlinks as my own user, then re-enabling UAC and rebooting again.

Rather unfortunate if I need to create further symlinks at a later stage, but it does work, it is just very inconvenient.

Answer 2

Run cmd.exe as administrator and use UNC path.

The following command worked for me as administrator:

mklink /D c:\temp11111 \server\share\foldername\

And also check, if your command contains appropriate ".