James Titcumb

An error that has annoyed me a lot recently at home on Vista, and I’ve just found two solutions for it.

The problem is when I come to install some pieces of software, I get “Error 1327: Invalid Drive P:\“. A useless error message, and fustrating.

The cause of this error is that my Pictures, Video and Music folders are stored on a NAS drive (mapped to P:\). When running a setup program in elevated security using the UAC, it appears Vista does not know that P:\ is mapped any more.

There are two solutions:

• Disconnect current drive. Run command prompt as Administrator, and “net use P: \\path\to\share”. Then map your drive as normal. I’m not sure if this sticks, or even works, as I’ve also done the other method which I think is more likely to have fixed it.
• In regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\. Change whichever mapped locations you have (e.g. P:\Music) to the full UNC path (e.g. \\path\to\share\Music). Basically, don’t use mapped drive letters, use the UNC path.