For a modern laptop that moves between home, office, and coffee shops, the "Network Location" is architecturally superior to the old-school Mapped Drive, yet almost nobody uses it because we are addicted to drive letters.
You can quickly link a shared network folder to a drive letter using the standard interface.
From a User Interface perspective, Windows 11 is trying to tell you something: network drive windows 11
Choose an available letter from the dropdown menu (e.g., Z:).
and select "This PC" from the left-hand navigation pane. For a modern laptop that moves between home,
You have to edit the Registry key EnableLinkedConnections . This forces Windows to "share" the mapped drive between your standard user session and your elevated Admin session. It’s a rare glimpse into how Windows sandboxes permissions behind the scenes.
: Check "Reconnect at sign-in" if you want the drive to stay connected after you restart your PC. Click Finish . Advanced Options and select "This PC" from the left-hand navigation pane
In Windows 10, the "Map Network Drive" button was prominently displayed in the ribbon at the top of File Explorer. In Windows 11, the Ribbon is gone, replaced by a minimal header.