drive mapped with system level powershell not accessible from File Explorer

Question

I'm trying to map a drive to another server using a "system" account in powershell. I am successful but then the server is only accessible if logged in as system, but not as administrator or regular user.

If I map it using an administrator powershell or dos command shell, then it is available to everyone. Unfortunately I cannot do that because I am using Amazon Web Service (AWS) SendCommand feature to do the mapping and it only uses the system level powershell. Even if I put the mapping command within a batch file and have it run that, the mapped drive still is only available to system powershell user.

Here is an example of the two commands that are sent via AWS SendCommand:

cd "C:/Program Files/Enventive/EnCOM Listener 1.0/lib/"
start-process "cmd.exe" "/c MapNetworkDrive 172.31.26.59"

The batch file does a net use command like this:

net use D: \\%1\Company /USER:Administrator /PERSISTENT:YES "<password>"

Is there any way to have a drive mapped by a system level powershell be available to all users?

I have also tried the following method from within a system level powershell but got the same result:

$user = "Administrator"
$pass = ConvertTo-SecureString -String '<password>' -AsPlainText -Force
$cred = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $user,$pass
New-PSDrive -Name D -PSProvider FileSystem -Root \\172.31.26.59\Company -Credential $cred -Persist

After doing this the D: drive was available from within the system level powershell, but not from a DOS command shell or Administrator level powershell

I also tried:

$net = new-object -ComObject WScript.Network
$net.MapNetworkDrive("D:", "\\172.31.26.59\Company", $false, "Administrator", '<password>')

Got the same result. In all attempts, what shows in File Explorer is "Disconnected Network Drive (D:)" and if I click on it a popup says "D:\ is not accessible. The user name or password is incorrect."

Answer 1

Is there any way to have a drive mapped by a system level powershell be available to all users? No.

New-PSDrive

Mapped network drives are specific to a user account. Mapped network drives that you create in sessions that are started by using the Run as administrator option or by using the credential of another user are not visible in a session that was started without explicit credentials, or by using the credentials of the current user.

By the way, you can run into drive letter collisions assigning a mapped drive letter to D…

A and B are typically reserved for the floppy drives of last century, and C and D are usually reserved for the hard drive and optical drive, so the card reader will use E, F, G, and H.