Share Mapped Drives with Elevated Admin in Regedit

When User Account Control (UAC) is enabled on Windows, the operating system creates two separate logon tokens for administrators: a filtered standard user token and an elevated administrator token. Because mapped network drives are tied to the specific logon session, drives created under standard user privileges are unavailable to elevated applications. You can resolve this issue by configuring the EnableLinkedConnections registry entry, which synchronizes network shares between both the filtered and elevated access tokens.

Step-by-Step Configuration via Regedit

Follow these steps to enable network drive preservation across administrative elevations:

  1. Open the Registry Editor
    • Press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog box.
    • Type regedit and press Enter or click OK.
    • Click Yes if prompted by User Account Control.
  2. Navigate to the System Policy Key

    • In the Registry Editor address bar, navigate to the following path:

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
  3. Create the EnableLinkedConnections Value
    • In the left pane, ensure the System key is selected.
    • Right-click on an empty area in the right pane, select New, and click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
    • Name the new value: EnableLinkedConnections
  4. Modify the Value Data
    • Double-click the newly created EnableLinkedConnections entry.
    • Set the Base to Hexadecimal.
    • Change the Value data field from 0 to 1.
    • Click OK to save the changes.
  5. Restart the System
    • Close the Registry Editor.
    • Restart your computer to apply the new policy.

After rebooting, Windows will link the logon sessions. Any network drives mapped in your standard user desktop session will automatically be accessible to software, command prompts, and scripts executed with elevated administrative rights.