Have you ever found the default drive map naming convention to be annoying? In the example below, the W: drive mapping description is: “downloads on ‘Domain Controller (dc1)’ (W:)”
People generally don’t care about a server description or server name, they just care about their W: drive. Sometimes an application drop down list isn’t wide enough to display the entire description and truncates what we are all looking for, a drive letter. To modify this behavior, there is a registry key that can change the network drive description.
Now look at the same drive mappings below and notice that the drive letter (important stuff) is now first, it’s easier to read, and we no longer care if text at the end of the long description is truncated.
This is done by applying the following registry key to the end workstation, you can read more in Microsoft KB:330193 (note that I had to use wordwrap at \CurrentVersion in the code below)
ShowDriveLetterFirst.reg
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
“ShowDriveLettersFirst”=dword:00000004
I then use a logon script to deploy this registry key to the workstations, the new settings will take place on the following login. My logon script of choice is KiXtart, and if you have not used it, I highly recommend checking it out. KiXtart was first included in the Windows NT resource kit, so it has been around for some time. Here is the code that I used (note that I had to use wordwrap at \CurrentVersion the code below):
logon.bat (partial)
;#####################################
;##### ADD REGISTRY KEY #############
;#####################################
; Add Registry Key to display drive letter before description
; If the value is 0, default settings
; If the value is 1, the drive letter is displayed first for remote drives
; If the value is 2, drive letters are not displayed
; If the value is 4, the drive letter is displayed first for all drives
$v_showdrv=ReadValue(“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\Explorer”,”ShowDriveLettersFirst”)
If $v_ShowDrv <> 4
WriteValue(“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\Explorer”,”ShowDriveLettersFirst”,”4″,”REG_DWORD”)
Endif
;####################################
