Using & Configuring Network Drive Control
Network Drive Control (NDC) is controlled through it's Console which is pictured above. The display lists a given drive's information in a horizontal line of 7 columns. Looking at the columns from left to right, the first column is the NDC Drive #, which is an accounting number for NDC's internal use. The next column shows the Network associated with the drive. In other words, when NDC sees that it is connected to that network when you log in, it will attempt to connect to that drive. After that is the Drive Letter NDC will use when it maps the drive. The next column is the Drive Path to the server & directory that is being mapped. Next is the User ID that the server is expecting to allow you to connect to it, and Password is the password the server is expecting to go with the User ID. The last column is a status column (Connected ?) showing whether the drive letter is mapped and information on the mapping. This last column is based on NDC querying Windows on the drive letter, so if multiple mappings use the same drive letter, say for different networks, all mappings for the drive letter will
The default of the password column is to hide the passwords, but they can be displayed by checking the "Show Passwords" checkbox as shown below.
The default of the drive path column is to display the path if the mapped drive, but they can be suppressed by checking the "Suppress Drive Path" checkbox as shown below. This selection is remembered the next time the NDC console is run.
There is a "Run Network Drive Control on Logon" check box that allows to you enable or disable whether NDC will attempt to map drives when you logon. This check box, like the network drive mappings, is user specific. If the box is checked, then NDC will try to map any drives if can based on what networks the machine is connected to. If the box is unchecked, then it will not attempt to map any drives.
There is a "Mapping Start Delay (sec)" box where one can fill in how long after you log on you want NDC to wait before attempting to map the drives appropriate for that network. This can help smooth the login process if you have a lot of other task starting up on logging. The maximum that this entry can be is one hour (3600 seconds), and the minimum is 0.*
There are six buttons running across the bottom of the display, labeled "Add Drive", "Clone + Edit Drive", "Delete Drive", "Edit Drive", "Connect Drive" and "Disconnect Drive".
Refresh List
After every change, NDC updates its display and so should always show what is going on. However, if you have doubts and want to force it to recheck the status of things and update the display, you can do so by pushing the Refresh List button. It should be noted that if a drive is mapped using other 3rd party software that isn't using Windows Networking, NDC may no see it. I know from my testing that NDC does not see drives mapped by WebDrive even when WebDrive is doing the mapping via WebDAV.
VPNs & multiple network connections to the same drive
Preventing Changes
*Note: Prior to v1.20, this delay was specified in minutes. Starting with v1.20, it is in seconds. The installer for v1.20 will convert this entry from minutes to seconds. While the v1.20 installer looks at this entry to try to avoid "correcting" it multiple times if for some reason you rerun the v1.20 installer multiple times, there may be instances where it misidentifies things and over corrects. Only the v1.20 installer will attempt this correction.