WinXP Network Drive Mapping Problem “The drive could not be mapped because no network was found”

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Issue: Network mapped drives that were “working just fine yesterday” are no longer available, but directly connecting to \server\share works just fine. Net Use commands don’t work, and the error “The drive could not be mapped because no network was found” is given in Windows shell or DOS commands.

Possible Solution: Workstation service not running. Started it, and drive mappings work again.

Aliens, man, aliens.

I’d put this out there as a reply on one of the boards out there, but I have to sign up to reply, so I’ll just reply here.

First hit for this error, when pasted into Google in quotes, is this one, which sadly, has only one reply (are your NIC drivers working?)

Hope this helps someone out there some day.

Posted on March 24th 2006 in Hardware

26 Responses to “WinXP Network Drive Mapping Problem “The drive could not be mapped because no network was found””

  1. Saint Aardvark the Carpeted Says:

    Dude! That’s so Linux.

  2. lacinda Says:

    hey, thanks! ran into this problem tonight and you fixed it.

  3. John Says:

    I had this same problem on a couple of machines on our domain – restarting the net logon service on the client machines solved it.

  4. Peterm Says:

    One of the problems is that if you had a network drive mapped when the service(s) fail, you cannot disconnect that drive letter, or reconnect it through explorer because it thinks it is connected. So you have to reboot. However, I have not tried a net use command, this might work.

  5. Dan Says:

    Thanks for taking the time to post this. Had the same problem and after a couple of nights not being able to find the root of the problem I ran across your post, 10 seconds later I was up and running. Thanks Again!

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  7. Tvich Says:

    I realy hate when someone solves my 2 hour problem with a post that explaines everything. You think you are so smart???
    ;)

    P.S. Thank you :)

  8. Frank Says:

    I have smae problem with several pc’s on our network. Could it be a virus ?? What is causing this

  9. Willie Says:

    Everytime I reboot my machine the Workstation service is stopped, even though the startup type is Automatic. Manually starting the service seems to fix the problem — but only until I reboot.

    If anyone figures out a good way to fix this problem, you might as well post it as a comment here since people with this issue seem to be able to find their way to this blog.

  10. greg Says:

    Thank you for your helpful suggestion. I noticed on my XP system rpc locator service which is a dependency of workstation was not running or set to run.

    Thanks for your comments.

  11. Brian Earsley Says:

    if you are using a firewall like ZoneAlarm, try adding an ip address range of the computers on the network or p2p environment to the firewall trusted area. then remap the share.

  12. Hex Says:

    Same problem, but the workstation service was not the issue. I turned on the TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service (both machines) and this solved it.

  13. Numerius Negidius Says:

    Just wanted to thank you for posting this page. I had the same issue. While your suggested fix didn’t work for me, it didn’t hurt, either.

    However, one of the fixes suggested in the comments did work for me. TCIP/IP NetBIOS Helper was not started on my laptop. I started it, and then was able to mount the drive.

    Thanks again for sharing. If you hadn’t posted, I wouldn’t have found the solution so quickly.

  14. Raizen Says:

    workstation services cannot started.. any suggestion?

  15. Raizen Says:

    Workstation services could not started. Once restart pc, it started and when I restart Workstation services, it cannot start anymore except restarting pc.. I try to repair LAN but I got netbt error.. I also try to enable netbios through tcpip but still got message netbios through tcpip disable from ipconfig /all status…

    help plz..

  16. Zen Render Says:

    Did you try Numerius’ idea below?

    However, one of the fixes suggested in the comments did work for me. TCIP/IP NetBIOS Helper was not started on my laptop. I started it, and then was able to mount the drive.

  17. Raizen Says:

    Yea I had try that suggestion.. but still got problem.. and that service is started at windows startup.

  18. Raizen Says:

    My problem fixed.. reinstall network adapter solved my problem.. =) thank you anyway. ^^

  19. Bryan Says:

    Thank you bro….

    My problem fixed…. start the workstation service and it’s done….

    You Rock Bro!! :)

  20. Bill Gowan Says:

    If you are still having that trouble make sure the TCP/IP NetBios Helper service is not disabled. That ended up being my problem.

  21. Evan Says:

    aha!! Awwwesome site
    TCIP/IP NetBIOS Helper service was not running (like a bunch of others here) which was causing me a lot of grief, turning it on fixed the problem. Thanks everyone!

  22. Ashish Says:

    My system suddenly did not recognize all the mapped drives and remote network servers. After reading through this my first step was to restart workstation services but it did not help. Next I enabled TCIP/IP NetBIOS Helper service and I was successfully able to map the network drives again.

    Thanks a bunch for the fix. My IT engineers are still struggling ;-)

  23. SeekUp Grasshopper Says:

    Thanks a million for the fix!!

  24. Martyn M Says:

    Thanks – saved me a lot of time!

  25. Stephen Perry Says:

    Thank You!

  26. Max Says:

    You just fixed the issue I was confronted with. Amazing that a post from 2006 can help me in 2014. That is an amazing and scary concept at the same time.

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