Fixes for WinXP Ignoring Novell Disk Mapping?

Arcidius asks: "It's been a year and still nobody seems to have a real solution for getting USB devices to work under Windows XP in an Novell environment. If you're running Windows XP and Novell servers (NetWare 6 for us), Windows XP will show all drives available, even though usually many are have been drive mapped. When you plug in an external hard drive or USB device, Windows maps it to the first free drive letter, usually F:, but since Novell has mapped it already, you can't access the drive. The fix so far has been to manually remap the memory key to a free letter, such as B:, and this has to be done on every machine. Either that, or switch your first mapped drive, which is more of a problem in most environments. Since Novell can't figure out a solution, (and Microsoft obviously doesn't care), I throw it to Slashdot. Does anyone have a real, network wide solution?"

Comments

Do you want a pony too?

[tverbeek]

You have a solution: configure the Novell Client to use G as the first drive letter for automapped drives. Do you want someone here to come implement it for you, as well? It's a fairly simple software tweak. A few clicks on the client properties, or double-click a .REG file with the proper setting in it, etc. 10 seconds per workstation, tops. Less on a new install, since you're probably already setting the default tree and context. If your users can't do it themselves with a short e-mail explaining the steps, and you have too many of them and/or too few of you to do it for them... then your problem isn't this XP/Novell "bug" but a lack of proper support systems.

Re:Do you want a pony too?

[Joiseybill]

Other Novell users have already solved this for you, too. Cool Solutions
This covers installs with or without ZEN.
+mod parent up - not a troll, he actually offered helpful info! Using a carefully crafted .reg file might actually preserve some level of security, too; isn't that the point of using Novell?