Windows clients - mapping unRAID User share very early at startup

[dschur]

Recently, I've been having difficulties getting some applications to work with the unRAID user shares. Specifically, I can not get the xbox 360 using the fall update to stream music from an XP or Vista PC that has the media in the library and shared viw Windows Media Player 11 (not talking about MCX, that works fine). I'm also having problems with the TwonkyMedia uPNP server sharing the same files. Basically I want to get music to stream to the 360 natively (not via media center) as the 360 has some cool features with this (you can play gaes with custome music, etc).

 

All of this I think is related to the fact that under Windows (XP and Vista) shares are mapped during the user login process and not before. I've tried all sorts of tinkering with the TwonkyVision and Windows Media Sharing service (changing the account they run under, adding a "net use" to that accounts $login share, etc) and even tried mapping the share at startup with ye old autoexec.bat.

 

So, my basic question is this:

 

Does anyone know a simple, reliable way to get windows to map a network drive for the whole system (all users) very early in the startup sequence, and for all services?

[mutant_matt]

If you've tried mapping the drive as a persistent connection, for the all users account, and that's not working, you could create a batch file (use the .cmd extension) and then use srvany to run that as a service, to run automatically on startup.  There are also places in the Registry (can't remember where off the top of my head) where you can get Windows to start things as part of the startup.  This is where apps that need to run something after a re-boot as part of an install put things to get in early.

 

HTH!

 

Matt

[dschur]

"If you've tried mapping the drive as a persistent connection, for the all users account

 

Hmm, sounds promising, but I don't know how to do that. No All users account in computer managagement. It sound like the trick though.

 

The srvany idea is great too, I'll give that a shot next, I can also make the other services dependent on it so I know it's started first.

 

Thanks for the help Matt!