In Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, is there a way to quickly detect if the target of a symbolic link is available?
For example, a symbolic link is created to a remote share UNC using the following command,
mklink /D c:\test \\remote-server\share
Now, if the remote share can no longer be reached (for example, the remote server is shutdown), attempting to access c:\test can take a number of seconds to timeout and fail. Eventually, Windows will display an error saying that the target is not available. Specifically, dir c:\test will output "File Not Found", cd /D c:\test will output "The network path was not found.", and Windows explorer will show an error stating "The specified network name is no longer available".
Is there a way to check the availability of c:\test without incurring that long timeout, or can the timeout value be adjusted?
