Disabling Automatic Network Shortcut Resolution

When you create a shortcut to a resource on a mapped network drive, and then remap the same drive to a different network resource, Windows attempts to connect to the original network resource when you access the shortcut.

Furthermore, when you re-establish the original connection, a different drive letter may be mapped to the original resource. This may cause programs to fail because the expected drive mappings are not present.

This behavior is part of the mechanism by which Windows attempts to resolve and automatically maintain shortcuts to network resources.

For additional information about Windows shortcut resolution, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Individual shortcuts can be modified by using the Shortcut.exe tool to remove Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path information from the shortcut.

Note that to successfully use the Shortcut.exe tool to remove UNC path information from a shortcut, it must meet the following criteria:

• The shortcut must contain both UNC and static path information. You can verify the shortcut contains the static path by right-clicking the shortcut, clicking Properties, and then clicking the Shortcut tab. The path in the Target box should be in the following format:
  <drive>:\folder\filename.ext
  You can verify the shortcut contains the UNC path information by viewing the shortcut in Notepad. To do so, click Start, click Run, and then type the following line in the Open box
  notepad <path>\<shortcut.lnk>
  where <path> is the path to the shortcut you want to change, and <shortcut.lnk> is the name of the shortcut from which you want to remove the UNC path information.
  
  You may need to click Word Wrap on the Edit menu to view the shortcut file. The shortcut file contains primarily unreadable binary information, however you should be able to read the UNC and mapped drive information. Do not modify or save the shortcut file.
• The drive specified in the static path has been mapped to a network share different than the original one referred to by the shortcut.
• The mapped drive must contain a directory path structure and a file whose name matches that of the static path in the shortcut.

The Shortcut.exe tool can be obtained from the following locations:

Windows 95

The Shortcut.exe tool is included in the Microsoft Windows 95 Resource Kit and is also located in the Admin\Apptools\Envvars folder on the Windows 95 CD-ROM.

Windows NT

The Shortcut.exe tool is included in the Microsoft Windows NT Server Resource Kit Version 4.0, Supplement One, in the I386\Desktop folder, MIPS\Desktop folder, and ALPHA\Desktop folder on the Windows NT Server Resource Kit CD-ROM.

For more information about how to resolve this issue in Windows NT, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: To remove the UNC information from a shortcut, follow these steps:

NOTE: If you want to disable only the automatic resolution, and you are not concerned about deleting the UNC path information from the shortcut, you should perform only steps 1 and 2. The shortcut must contain both a UNC path and a static path.

1. Click Start, point to Programs, and then click Command Prompt or MS-DOS Prompt.
2. Use the Shortcut.exe tool to disable automatic network shortcut resolution with this shortcut. To do so, type the following line at the command prompt, and then press ENTER
   shortcut.exe -s <path><shortcut.lnk>
   where <path> is the path to the shortcut you want to change, and <shortcut.lnk> is the name of the shortcut from which you want to remove the UNC path information.
3. Click Start, point to Programs, click Windows NT Explorer or Windows Explorer, and then locate the shortcut you specified in step 2.
4. Rename the shortcut. When you rename the shortcut, Windows updates the shortcut so that it does not perform automatic network shortcut resolution. Do not change the extension of the shortcut.
   
   For information about how to rename a file, click Start, click Help, click the Index tab, type renaming, and then double-click the "Renaming files" topic.
   
   NOTE: You must rename the shortcut file in Windows NT Explorer or Windows Explorer. The shortcut is not updated if you rename it at a command prompt.
5. Use the Shortcut.exe tool to resolve the shortcut to a static location and the delete the UNC path information. To do so, type the following line at a command prompt and then press ENTER
   shortcut.exe -r <path>\<shortcut.lnk>
   where <path> is the path to the shortcut you want to change, and <shortcut.lnk> is the name of the shortcut from which you want to remove the UNC information.

For additional information, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

The same result can be applied globally to all shortcuts by installing the following updated file for Windows 95, or a later version of this file:

Automatic resolution may be undesirable if the file pointed to by the shortcut has been deliberately moved to a different resource, or if a load- balancing mechanism is in place so that the same drive letter may be mapped to one of several network resources with identical contents.

When you right-click a shortcut, click Properties, and then click the Shortcut tab, the Target box specifies the path to the file and can contain either a UNC path (\\server\share\directory\filename.ext), or a static path (<drive:>\directory\filename.ext).

A shortcut to a network resource may have either type of path as the target depending on how it was created. For example, if the shortcut was created by right-clicking a network file and clicking Create Shortcut, it contains a static path and a UNC path.

When you run Shortcut.exe with the -s parameter to disable automatic network shortcut resolution, depending on the type of shortcut and the status of any network drive mappings, the following results occur when you double-click the shortcut:

Shortcut Containing UNC Path Only

Disabling automatic shortcut resolution in a local shortcut, or one containing only UNC information, has no effect on the manner in which the shortcut is resolved.

Shortcut Containing UNC and Static Paths

For a shortcut that contains both UNC and static paths, shortcut resolution is more complex. If the you have not disabled shortcut resolution, then the original network resource is used. If the shortcut is mapped to the drive specified in the static path, that drive is used. If the resource is mapped to a different drive, the new drive is used, and the shortcut's static path is updated with the new drive information. If the resource is not currently mapped to a drive, one is assigned automatically, and the shortcut is updated with the new drive information.

If shortcut resolution has been disabled, it is resolved to the specified static path. Note that the original UNC path information is still contained within the shortcut.

If the original network share is mapped to the drive specified in the static path, the shortcut is resolved to it, but the UNC path information is not deleted from the shortcut.

If a different network share has been mapped to the drive indicated by the static path, and the static path points to an existing file on that drive, then the UNC information is removed from the shortcut, and the shortcut is resolved like a local shortcut. The update to Shell32.dll causes UNC information in all shortcuts to be ignored if the DWORD value "LinkResolveIgnoreLinkInfo" is present in the following registry key, and set to a data value of "1": If this registry value is not present, this update will function the same as the released Windows 95 version in this respect. This registry value is not added automatically when installing this update.


For additional information about issues resolved by updates to this component, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

For additional information about Windows 95 updates, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: