Creating a symbolic link to mapped network drive in Windows

Run cmd as administrator and use UNC path.

The following command worked for me as administrator:

mklink /D C:\temp11111 \\server\share\foldername\

And also check whether your command contains appropriate quotes (").

This is a old thread, but still want to clarify that you can create symbolic links like this:

Your user account has some security policies on them by default which can be disabled, through secpol.msc. Go to the Run dialog and type:

secpol.msc

• Navigate to: Local Policies > User Rights Assignment
• Double click: Create Symbolic Links
• Add your username to the list, click OK
• Log off

When you log back in, run cmd with admin privileges. Now you should be able to run mklink commands like this with no problems:

mklink /d %userprofile%\music \\server\music

Note: Make sure the directory you're trying to link to exists or hasn't been moved or deleted, prior to linking.

My solution became to disable User Account Control, reboot, then create the symlinks as my own user, then re-enabling UAC and rebooting again.

Rather unfortunate if I need to create further symlinks at a later stage, but it does work, it is just very inconvenient.

You need to enable local to remote links by running this command with elevated rights:

fsutil behavior set SymlinkEvaluation L2R:1

Also you can enable this with your local or group policy: Computer\System\Filesystem\Selectively allow the evaluation of a symbolic link → allow local to remote