Today I was trying to map a network drive on my laptop and received a message saying “The Network folder specified is currently mapped using a different user name and password“. Well, I thought there is one and went into “My Computer”. interestingly….I don’t see it! Well, I rebooted the laptop hoping it would drop any hanging hidden cables. Unfortunately it didn’t do the trick.
BTW, My laptop already has 2 mapped drives(Y$ and Z$) and I’m trying to create a 3rd one pointing to another share on completely different file server.(See below screenshot)
Now, I tried issuing “NET USE” command to see if it shows anything useful. Surprisingly It said, I’ve 3 mapped drives(3rd one being the one which I’m trying to map without any Drive letter being assigned!!!). See below Screenshot…
As you can see there’s one more thing(well, without drive letter assignment) and that’s the exact share which I’m trying to create as a mapped drive on my laptop. Now I know the issue. All we need to do is to Delete that “Hanging from Nowhere” Mapped Drive using “NET USE” and retry to map it.
Syntax for deleting mapped drive using NET USE:
NET USE /DELETE \\My_ServerName\My_Sharename
Boom….It dissapeared as you can see below.
Notice in the above screenshot, that “magical and annoying” share got deleted succesfully and only Y$ and Z$ are present as expected.
Now, I was able to map that share to a new drive without any issues…Hope this helps if you get into same issue. Cheers 🙂
MSSQLTREK 
Great finding, it work for me too. MS site has provided different solution which is not possible for me.
4 years later, I just wanted to comment and say thanks. This fixed worked. Instead of taking forever to transfer files from one location to another, I can now map this network drive on remote desktop so they transfer instantly. Thanks for the fix. Worked perfectly
Thanks a lot! I have tried several ‘fixes’ from various websites and nothing really worked until this one – removed mapped share with NET USE, restarted computer and it worked like a charm!
Glad I could help.