Windows operating systems provide the net use command in order to connect ,remove, configure connections to the shared resources like mapped drives, network resources and network printers. net use command is used from command line and provided operating systems Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, windows 10 and Windows Servers from 2003 to 2019 .

Syntax

net use command has following usage syntax. We will provide the drive name and the path we want to use.

net use DRIVE: PATH

• `DRIVE:` is the name of the drive like `:G` `:Z` etc. used with local system.
• `PATH` is the remote resource we want to use which will provide the IP address or hostname with resource URI. Example \\192.168.1.20\test

Help

We can get some help about net use command by using /? parameters like below.

> net use /?

List Currently Existing Shares

We will start by listing currently existing, joined or mounted remote shares. We will just use net use command like below.

> net use

Join or Mount A Remote File Share

We will start with a simple example by mounting a remote file share into our local system. We will mount file share named Backup which resides at 192.168.145.162

> net use z: \\192.168.145.162\Backup

Join File Share with Specified User

In previous example we have mounted remote file share with the current user and privileges. In some cases we may need to mount with a different user than current session user. We can specify the user we want to use with /USER option. In this example we will use user Administrator .

> net use z: \\192.168.145.162\Backup /USER:Administrator

There will also also some information about the mount like Status, Connections, Resource type.

OR we can also provide the user password explicitly. Keep in mind that providing password in clear text is a security problem. Password will be 123456Aa.

> net use z: \\192.168.145.162\Backup /USER:Administrator  123456Aa.

Join File Share Persistently

Mounting or joining remote file shares will have only effect current sessions. If session is closed or system is restarted or connection is lost the share will not mounted automatically. This is the default behavior. We can also join or mount a remote file share persistently with the /persistent:Yes .

> net use z: \\192.168.145.162\Backup /Persistent:Yes

Join File Share and Specify Drive Letter

Up to now we have not specified a local drive letter to the mounted or joined remote share. The default behavior is providing a drive letter in a row manner. We can specify the drive letter like :W or :Z like below.

> net use :w \\192.168.145.162\Backup

Make All Future Connections Persistent

The default behavior of the net use command is making connections not persistent. If we want to make all future connection persistent without specifying persistent option explicitly we need to enable persistence globally like below.

> net use /Persistent:Yes

Join Printer Share

Printers also a remote resource which can be used by multiple computers like file shares. We can use net use command in order to join a printer into local system. We just provide the printer IP address or host name.

> net use LPT1: \\192.168.1.10\prn

Disconnect From A File or Printer Share

If we want to remove, delete or disconnect from all ready connected share we can use /delete option. We also need to specify the share letter we want to remove. In this example we will remote share named :z like below.

> net use :z /delete

Disconnect and Close All Shares

We may need to removei close and disconnect all currently mounted shares. We will use *  with the /delete like below.

> net use * /delete

There is a confirmation mechanism which will ask us that whether we want to continue removal of the remote shares.