Mapping a CDROM drive across a network


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I need to map a cdrom drive from a computer across my network onto my computer, but I need it to appear as an actual physical CDROM drive. Does anyone know if this is possible?

I'm using Windows 2000.

I tried using VirtualDrive, but aparently it's only good for emulating cd's, not the actual drives.

Any suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks.

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in regular means, in Windows (even XP) such things are not possible... When you map something, it is mapped as a network drive... of course, network could mean anything... If however you want a network CD-RW drive to be shared of the network, there are a lot of proggies that can do that.... like NeroNET... but in Windows, you cant have network CD-ROM drives act like native CD-ROM drives... its treated like a network hard disk... same applies to network mapped floppy drives etc... add of course, windows use the hard drive icon for all mapped shares... even if you map to a folder share, it will still show up as a different drive!

/Raptor

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you mean share the cd rom drive?

Not really. I have the drive shared.

Basically, I want to be able to open the an audio cd in Media Player from a cdrom on another computer, without having to select the CDA files. I want it to appear as an actual physical LOCAL cdrom drive, not a networked or mapped drive.

VirtualDrive can create fake CDROM drive letters and point them to VCD files. I want to be able to create a fake cdrom drive letter and point it to a share, such as "//MediaServer/D/"

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Actually here a screenie from my network envir.

As you see no options such as Eject, Close Tray and others exists for CD-ROM Drive on 'Frenzy' and CD-RW Drive on 'Frenzy'

It acts just like any other network share...

Here's the pic:

post-32-1063228066.jpg

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You can only share it as a network share, not as a CD Rom drive. It's not going to be a CD. It's just another folder on the network.

man, that figures. Microsoft needs to make that possible.

Yeah I've done it with NeroNET before but that wont solve my audio cd problems.

Ah well. Thanks for the feedback.

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Sharing a CD-ROM drive over the network will not make you able to use it as audio CD player AT ALL. Not currently. I've been suggesting networked devices of any type some time ago for Longhorn. The idea was to virtualize the bus and sent requests to other computers before passing them to the miniport drivers or whatever driver is responsible for it, so that a device would appear local though it's on another box. But I guess that'll imply way too much overhead during normal operation (due the extra layer), so don't get your hopes high.

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