Mounting Network UNC Paths to Drive Letters in Windows CMD

There are two methods to mount a network UNC (Universal Naming Convention) path to a local drive letter in Windows Command Prompt. While pushd is commonly used, it has a significant limitation that may affect certain scenarios.

Common Method: Using pushd

set unc_path=\\Host\a\b\c
pushd %unc_path%
:: Your commands here
popd

When using pushd, Windows automatically mounts \\Host\a to the first available drive letter (for example, Y:), then changes the working directory to Y:\b\c. However, this approach has a critical limitation: if the user has permissions for \\Host\a\b\c but lacks access to \\Host\a, all commands in this directory will fail with an Access is denied error.

Alternative Method: Using net use

set unc_path=\\Host\a\b\c

:: Mount the UNC path to an available drive letter
net use * %unc_path%

:: Extract the assigned drive letter
for /f "tokens=2,3" %%i in ('net use') do if '%%j=='%unc_path% set drive_letter=%%i

:: Change to the mounted drive
%drive_letter%

:: Your commands here

:: Clean up: unmount the drive
net use %drive_letter% /delete /y

This alternative approach first assigns an available drive letter to the path using net use, then retrieves the assigned drive letter. The key advantage over pushd is that net use mounts the specific subdirectory rather than the root directory, thereby avoiding the permission issues mentioned above.

Note: When executing these commands directly in the command prompt (rather than in a batch file), replace %%i and %%j with %i and %j respectively.