Map a Network Drive from XP to Windows 7

Weve received a lot of questions about mapping a drive from XP to Windows 7 to access data easily.

With the new Homegroup feature in Windows 7, it makes sharing data between computers a lot easier.

In this first example were mapping to another Windows 7 drive on the connection.

Open Computer and from the toolbar choose Map web link Drive.

The drive will map and the contents of the folder will open up.

When you look in Computer, youll see the mapped drive under web link location.

This process works if you want to connect to a server drive as well.

In this example we map to a Home Server drive.

There are extra steps youll need to take to make it work however.

Right-click My Computer and select Manage.

Under Computer Management expand Local Users and Groups and choose the Users folder.

Right-click an empty area and click New User.

Close out of the New User Screen and youll see the user you created in the list.

After the user is added, you may need to reboot XP before proceeding to the next step.

Here were browsing to the XP Media Center Edition machine.

Now we can enter in the user name and password we just created.

Now we can browse to and map specific shared folders on the XP machine.

So go back into Computer Management \ Local Users and Groups \ Groups then double punch Administrators.

snag the Add button in Administrators Properties window.

Then login…

Again the contents of the drive will open up for you to access.

Here it’s possible for you to see we have two drives mapped.

One to another Windows 7 machine on the data pipe, and the other to the XP computer.

If you ever want to disconnect a drive, just right-punch it and then Disconnect.

There are several scenarios where you might want to map a drive in Windows 7 to access specific data.

This comes in handy where you have a online grid with different versions of Windows running on it.