During the PXE boot process, computers are unable to map a network drive and may get the error "Invalid drive specification. Cannot map drive"

Products

• Deployment Solution
• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

During automation boot, a computer will receive the error "Invalid drive specification. Cannot map drive."

Cause

This error can be caused by a number of issues:

1. Incorrect drive mappings in the PXE Configuration.
2. The drive being referred to is offline.
3. The account being used does not have correct access rights.
4. Incorrect Default boot options specified in PXE Configuration DS tab.
5. Using DOS or Linux Automation when Domain policies have NTLM authentication disabled. (See Microsoft TechNote at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783005.aspx for more information.)

          NTLM authentication setting are found in the following Group Policy:

          Domain Security Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options >
          Network security: LAN Manager authentication level.

          The following two policies are disabled:

          Windows Settings / Security Settings / Local Policies / Security Options
            * Microsoft Network Server: Digitally sign communications (always)
            * Microsoft Network Server: Digitally sign communications (if client agrees)\

 

6. The drive letter "F" is already in use by the device

Resolution

1. Edit the PXE Configuration utility wizard for the boot menu being used. On Step 7 of 12, verify all drive mappings. Drive F should be mapped to the Deployment Server eXpress share point. Enable the use of the LMHOSTS file at the bottom of the window.
2. Check general access to the desired drive from another workstation.
3. Use an account that has Administrator rights to the Deployment Server as well as full access rights to any other drive locations being used. Remember that DOS requires that usernames and passwords conform to the 8.3 standards (eight characters or less) using only DOS recognizable characters.
4. In PXE Configuration under the DS tab, verify that Default Boot option is set for the correct boot process and not set to Local Boot.

5. DOS and Linux automation cannot be used when NTLM is disabled. WinPE is the only automation environment that will authenticate with this network restriction.

6. If the drive letter "F" is already in use (this is common when using WinPE automation), it will be necessary to change the drive letter that maps to the express share, to something higher. Also be aware that any other drive mappings done in automation (such as to image store locations) also need to be mapped to drives that will not have conflicts. i.e. "M", "N", "O", etc. [Note: Do not map drives to the letters "X", "Y" or "Z" since these can be used by the automation as RAM drives.]

Applies To

Deployment Solution all versions