Categories: Windows 11 & Windows 10Windows Server

SOLVED: File Explorer Mapped Drives Close Spontaneously

If you see your mapped drives disappear you may have a Group Policy that maps your network shares using the REPLACE feature. Another symptom I noticed occurs if you remote (RDP) to a different PC and leave it for a few days, multiple mappings for the same letter will appear.

The simple fix is to set the Drive Map GPO to use the Action UPDATE.

To stop your mapped drives disappearing or automatically closing:

Launch Group Policy Management
Find your drive mapping GPO, right click on it and select EDIT
Expand USER CONFIGURATION > PREFERENCES > WINDOWS SETTINGS > DRIVE MAPS
Double click on the drive map that is automatically closing
Change the ACTION drop down from REPLACE to UPDATE

I found this problem occurs on Windows 10, but others have found it on many older operating systems.

If this does not solve your issue, you might find this discussion on the Spiceworks blog to be helpful.

Next Solved: Microsoft Store Error Code 141078 »

Previous « SOLVED: The Complete List Of How To Fix Windows Update Errors, Like 0x800F0922

View Comments

David Dawson says:

January 7, 2020 at 11:49 am

Thanks! This worked for a Windows 10 server. We had a Group Policy to map several file server shares using drive letters. Whenever we had Explorer open with one of the mapped drives and the policy refreshed (manual or automatic) then Explorer would crash. We changed the policy to Update instead of Replace for each drive and now it's stable when we refresh the policy on that computer.