Resolving Mapped Network Drive Issues with Administrator Privileges

In my office, we change the location of our My Documents folder to a network path so that working files are included in backup jobs automatically.  This occasionally leads to issues installing software, installing application updates, and sometimes running applications when these actions are run using the Administrator account.  In many cases running as administrator is a requirement for these actions.

The problem is that when you run as an administrator, mapped drives for the user account are not carried over to the Administrator credential.  Here are some errors I've seen:

• When running Visual Studio as Administrator - Error: Template store path is invalid: Unexpected path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\Work item Templates
• When installing new software or Adobe updates - Error 1327 - Invalid Drive
• When installing NuGet Package Manager update - Cannot find specified path

Fortunately there is a simple solution available to allow user mapped drives to be accessed by the Administrator account (who isn't much of an admin if it can't access what it needs to!).  I have only tested this in Windows 7 64bit.

Open the registry editor and navigate to the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/System

Add a new DWORD to the System folder called EnableLinkedConnections with the value of 1.

Restart your computer and your mapped drives will be available to the Administrator account!

See the WinAbility site for a Windows 8 workaround.