Help with Windows Remote Desktop shortcuts...

Athenor

I am having a particularly vexing problem at the moment with Windows Remote Desktop (XP), and as usual I am turning to the experts on this forum for help.

My boss is needing to pull down some data from a remote server and save it locally. The initial instructions we were given didn't work, so instead we went with a workaround that essentially had us map his computer as a network drive on the remote computer, then create a desktop shortcut to a folder. In essence, we were creating a drop box, of sorts.

However, anytime the remote desktop connection is closed and then re-started, the shortcut stops working. Oh, it still appears, but it seems to hang and not connect. It's as if the remote computer has completely and utterly forgotten about how to open said folder. It can still open the folder without a problem using the mapped network drive (under My Computer), but that is kind of a multi-click function when I'm trying to create a single-click process here.


Now, I did find someone who was having a similar problem, and created a workaround involving opening an explorer window right to the folder. While this does work, you are no longer able to drag & drop onto the workaround, and the workaround doesn't show up as a folder in the programs he is using -- in other words, it is a shortcut to a program, not a shortcut to a folder.


I know that remote desktop sucks. If I could use any other program to dial in I would. But I can't, as the decision to use Remote Desktop is out of my hands. So... yeah.

Any advice? I'm thinking that the easiest solution might just have a script run when he logs onto the remote computer, but I know next to nothing about writing such a script.

PeregrineFalcon

Drop the following line into notepad on the remote box, save it as mapdrive.cmd, and throw a shortcut to it in the startup folder.

net use Z: \\LOCALBOXNAME\sharedfolder

That should map the folder to Z: on login.

Ruckus

PeregrineFalcon wrote: »

Drop the following line into notepad on the remote box, save it as mapdrive.cmd, and throw a shortcut to it in the startup folder.

net use Z: \\LOCALBOXNAME\sharedfolder

That should map the folder to Z: on login.

Ha, that's the suggestion my mind was developing as I was reading the problem.

PirateJon

That will work if the issue was them not setting the mapping to be persistent. I'm not sure that's actually the case since he said the mapped drive still works after reboot. If the mapping was the issue, it would have not been there

My boss is needing to pull down some data from a remote server and save it locally. The initial instructions we were given didn't work

This is where you should start.

But given that at least the RDP and SMB ports are already open, I'd think automating this would be your best bet. Assuming the server admin can setup a read-only share for this user, and they should consider it trivial, you could automate it in three steps with a simple CMD file he could run from his desktop.

net use z: \\server\share (maps resource)
xcopy z:\filesource c:\myfiledestination /v (copies files)
net use z: \\server\share /delete (clean up)

Hell, even if they can't give you the proper share you could use that same structure above once the user logged into the server.

net use z: \\workstation\share
xcopy c:\file\source z:\myfiledestination /v
net use z: \\workstation\share /delete

Xcopy. Three times as XTREME as regular copy. :winky:

underdonk

Yowza. Come on people. This is Windows we're talking about here. Have you simply tired dragging/dropping into/out of the terminal window? This works.

Gilbert0

OR from the target machine assuming it's got a share,


start -> run ->
\\server\c$\whateveryouarelookingfor