Windows – Determine Domain and username used to map a network drive

authenticationmapped-drivewindowswmic

Using Windows 7 Enterprise with SP1, but I'm hoping to get a generic answer that would apply to Windows XP/2003/2008/Vista/7.

From a command prompt, I execute a net use command to map the Z: drive to a share on another computer, but I don't use my current credentials, I specify a different domain and user to map the drive.

net use z: \\rd-pc2037\C_DRIVE password /user:rd-pc2037\Administrator

The command completes successfully. Now that the drive is mapped, how can I find what Domain and Username I used to successfully map the drive? I can't seem to find what I want with the net use command.

C:\Users\rdomarat>net use 
New connections will not be remembered.

Status       Local     Remote                    Network
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
OK           Z:        \\rd-pc2037\C_DRIVE       Microsoft Windows Network 
The command completed successfully.

C:\Users\rdomarat>net use Z: 
Local name        Z: 
Remote name       \\rd-pc2037\C_DRIVE 
Resource type     Disk 
Status            OK
# Opens           0
# Connections     1 
The command completed successfully.

Checking the properties of the share in Windows Explorer and looking at the security tab showed me what permissions different people would have, but I didn't see how which DOMAIN\User I had used. I searched through the registry with limited success as well.

Any thought?

Best Answer

WMI is your friend:

> wmic netuse where LocalName="Z:" get UserName /value

UserName=rd-pc2037\Administrator

Related Solutions

Windows – Map a network drive to be used by a service

Use this at your own risk. (I have tested it on XP and Server 2008 x64 R2)

For this hack you will need SysinternalsSuite by Mark Russinovich:

Step one: Open an elevated cmd.exe prompt (Run as administrator)

Step two: Elevate again to root using PSExec.exe: Navigate to the folder containing SysinternalsSuite and execute the following command psexec -i -s cmd.exe you are now inside of a prompt that is nt authority\system and you can prove this by typing whoami. The -i is needed because drive mappings need to interact with the user

Step Three: Create the persistent mapped drive as the SYSTEM account with the following command net use z: \\servername\sharedfolder /persistent:yes

It's that easy!

WARNING: You can only remove this mapping the same way you created it, from the SYSTEM account. If you need to remove it, follow steps 1 and 2 but change the command on step 3 to net use z: /delete.

NOTE: The newly created mapped drive will now appear for ALL users of this system but they will see it displayed as "Disconnected Network Drive (Z:)". Do not let the name fool you. It may claim to be disconnected but it will work for everyone. That's how you can tell this hack is not supported by M$.

C# – Validate a username and password against Active Directory

If you work on .NET 3.5 or newer, you can use the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement namespace and easily verify your credentials:

// create a "principal context" - e.g. your domain (could be machine, too)
using(PrincipalContext pc = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, "YOURDOMAIN"))
{
    // validate the credentials
    bool isValid = pc.ValidateCredentials("myuser", "mypassword");
}

It's simple, it's reliable, it's 100% C# managed code on your end - what more can you ask for? :-)

Read all about it here:

Update:

As outlined in this other SO question (and its answers), there is an issue with this call possibly returning True for old passwords of a user. Just be aware of this behavior and don't be too surprised if this happens :-) (thanks to @MikeGledhill for pointing this out!)

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