touch a UNIX file at startup in Windows XP

[Mr. Tibs]

Hi.

I'm trying to map a UNIX network drive on a Windows XP machine at startup; I use DiskAccess for mounting NFS drives and MKSToolkit for korn shell scripting. In Windows 2000, I had no problem: I would simply execute: "touch \\dm\user\$host" in a scheduled taks which ran at startup and everything worked like a charm (I didn't even have to map the UNIX drive - I used the UNC path).

Windows XP presents a few problems. First of all, I cannot use the UNC path; I need to map the network drive first. After mapping it, I can either use the mapped drive letter, or I can use the the UNC path.

Second of all, the scheduled task doesn't run properly: I get "access denied" when I try to touch the file; it cannot even see the UNIX drive. I found a dirty way around this: I added a "sleep 30" statement to allow whatever the heck authentication it needs to do and it does work.

I've also been told to use the Group Policy and add the startup script there. That didn't work, and it shouldn't work since at startup, I don't think a user is created yet - and you do need a user to access network drives.

My question: is there a more elegant way to touch a file on a UNIX drive at startup from Windows XP, or do you have to through all this mess?

Thanks,

Tibs

[kstruble]

if you add the following to your registry,

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor]

"DisableUNCCheck"=dword:00000001

you can use UNC paths from a CMD prompt, batch files, etc.