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

Run cmd as administrator and use UNC path.

The following command worked for me as administrator:

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

And also check whether your command contains appropriate quotes (").

Answer 2

This is a old thread, but still want to clarify that you can create symbolic links like this:

Your user account has some security policies on them by default which can be disabled, through secpol.msc. Go to the Run dialog and type:

secpol.msc

• Navigate to: Local Policies > User Rights Assignment
• Double click: Create Symbolic Links
• Add your username to the list, click OK
• Log off

When you log back in, run cmd with admin privileges. Now you should be able to run mklink commands like this with no problems:

mklink /d %userprofile%\music \\server\music

Note: Make sure the directory you're trying to link to exists or hasn't been moved or deleted, prior to linking.

Answer 3

If you are doing this in Powershell, you'll need to open CMD first:

CMD /C MKLINK /D C:\local\path \\UNC\path\folder

The /C argument tells CMD to run the command in the string and then exit.

Answer 4

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 5

You cannot do symbolic links in networks and mapped drive as source, you can only use it as target and the source is your local drives

you cannot do like this:

Mapped Drive is Drive Z:\ Target (Local drive or Network)

Mklink /d z:\SourceFolder c:\Target Mklink /d z:\SourceFolder F:\SharedNetworkFolder

they are error and cannot used as symbolic links

only from Local to network and Local to Local only will work in symbolic links

Answer 6

You need to enable local to remote links by running this command with elevated rights:

fsutil behavior set SymlinkEvaluation L2R:1

Also you can enable this with your local or group policy: Computer\System\Filesystem\Selectively allow the evaluation of a symbolic link → allow local to remote

Answer 7

The answer below is doesn't exactly answer the question, but since I ended here after searching for my issue, I'll add my solution.

Somehow I always got the

The system cannot find the file specified.

when I tried to make a hardlink using mklink.

However, when I used fsutil hardlink it worked.

Note that the source and destination folders for mklink and fsutil hardlink are reversed!