Instructions about mounting a network drive in Windows 7

(from Dr. Frank Rice)

By default, Window 7 sets its network security level too high for the soph lab network drive to handle. Attached is the procedure to adjust Windows 7 settings so that the drive may be mounted, as well as showing how to actually mount the drive. This works on Win7 Professional, not Win7 Home Edition. For that version, one must edit the windows registry directly, but I didn't want to give a procedure for that (it's too easy to screw up).

On can always use FTP to connect to the drive, though (not anonymous; you must provide a user name and password). For Macs and Linux boxes, the network security is more relaxed, so no special things must be done to mount the drive, but you might need to tell them to use the smb protocol, by specifying the directory to mount as 'smb://sldrive.caltech.edu/data', though I'm no Mac expert.

PS: For the bold, here is the registry editing procedure (I haven't tried it myself, but I'm pretty sure it will work if done correctly. I actually checked my computer's registry using regedit, and the registry entry does exist). Set a system restore point first, because if you screw up the registry, the computer may not even boot successfully (without using Safe Mode).

  1. Open registry editor ( Start search - regedit)
  2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
  3. Create a new DWORD value with the following properties: NAME: LmCompatibilityLevel VALUE: 1
  4. Restart your PC and try to mount the drive again...
  5. If you still can't mount the drive because the password isn't accepted, then repeat the above steps except set VALUE: 0
  6. Restart your PC and try to mount the drive again...

Also see this illustrated PDF file.