Cannot Access Network Share or Incorrect Files Are Displayed

When you attempt to connect to a shared network drive on a Windows 95 or Windows 98-based computer, one of the following symptoms may occur:

• You receive the following error message:
  
  Access to the specified device, path or file is denied.
• You connect to the shared network drive, but the files on the drive are incorrect.

This problem can occur if either of the following conditions exists:

• The shared network drive is a removable drive that is not currently in the computer.
• The shared network drive is partitioned using a non-MS-DOS file system.

To work around this problem, have your network administrator reconfigure the remaining drives so that the correct share names and access permissions are used for each drive.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98.

In a networking environment, every shared resource has a share name that is linked to the drive letter on which the resource is located. This drive letter is associated with a logical drive on the computer. If a shared logical drive becomes unavailable, its drive letter, share name, and access permissions are assigned to a different logical drive.

For example, drive 1 is a removable drive shared with full access permissions, and drive 2 is a fixed hard disk shared with read-only access permissions. If drive 1 is not in the computer when you attempt to connect to it, you instead connect to drive 2 and have full access permissions to it. If you attempt to connect to drive 2, you receive the error message.

This problem also occurs if a shared network drive is converted to a non- MS-DOS file system. For example, drive 1 is a fixed hard disk shared with full access permissions, and drive 2 is a fixed hard disk that is not shared. If your computer is configured as a dual-boot system (that is, it is configured to run both Windows 95 or Windows 98 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0) and you convert drive 1 to an NTFS file system, drive 2 inherits the drive letter, share name, and access permissions of drive 1 when you start Windows 95 or Windows 98.