PowerShell equivalent of Batch command "START" to open a window with a mapped drive

Question

This is the batch commands I use to open a window with a mapped drive:

net use X: "\\SERVERNAME\FOLDER" /user:"USER" "PASSWORD"
START X:\

What is the PowerShell version of this?

Answer 1

Both of your commands work as-is in PowerShell:

• net refers to the net.exe external program (a standard Windows utility), which PowerShell can equally call.

  • On Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 or higher, you can use the New-SmbMapping cmdlet as an alternative to net use.

  • Note that while PowerShell cmdlets are generally more secure by not allowing passwords to be specified as plain text and requiring a credential object instead (see Get-Credential), this appears not to be the case with New-SmbMapping.

• While start is an internal cmd.exe command, PowerShell has an alias named start for its own Start-Process cmdlet; if you pass a drive specification, the two commands work the same.

  • Alternatively, you could have used the Invoke-Item cmdlet (Invoke-Item X:\),
    • which more narrowly supports opening only documents and folders, by relative or absolute paths (no $env:PATH search for executables is performed).
    • in the case of a drive-spec-only path such as X:, Invoke-Item opens File Explorer in whatever directory is current on that drive (by contrast, Start-Process and cmd.exe's start open the target drive's root directory).