Automatically connect to network drives after connecting to VPN

Question

I have several mapped network drives that I can only access when on my company's LAN or when connected to the VPN using OpenVPN.

When I connect to the network in our office, the drives automatically connect. However, when I connect via the VPN, only two of the drives automatically connect (I tried net use /persistent:yes but that didn't seem to make a difference, so maybe I'm not understanding that command).

What's odd to me is that the rest of my drives say "unavailable" as the status when I type net use. If I click on the drive in Windows Explorer, the drive status is then blank. Those drives do not display when I use get-PSDrive. Not sure if that's related to the autoconnect or not.

Any ideas for what I can do to automatically connect to my other drives?

Answer 1

This the solution that ended up working for me:

I used Task Scheduler to create a task that automatically runs when I access OpenVPN. The tasks launches a .cmd file with the following code:

@ECHO OFF
PowerShell -Command "Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser Unrestricted" >> "C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp\StartupLog.txt" 2>&1
PowerShell -File "C:\Scripts\MapDrives.ps1" 

This calls the following PowerShell script.

$start = Get-Date
$endTime = $start.AddMinutes(3)  # Set end time 3 minutes from start

$MappedDrives = Get-SmbMapping | Where-Object { $_.Status -ne "Ok" } | Select-Object LocalPath, RemotePath, Status

# Function to log messages to a file
function LogMessage {
    param(
        [string]$Message,
        [string]$Color,
        [switch]$Display=$False
    )

    $logFilePath = Join-Path -Path $scriptDirectory -ChildPath "mappinglog.txt"
    Add-Content -Path $logFilePath -Value $Message
    if( $Display ) {
        Write-Host $Message -ForegroundColor $Color
    }
}

# Create or append to the log file
$scriptDirectory = Split-Path -Parent $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition
$logFilePath = Join-Path -Path $scriptDirectory -ChildPath "mappinglog.txt"
if (Test-Path $logFilePath) {
    Remove-Item -Path $logFilePath 
}

New-Item -Path $logFilePath -ItemType File | Out-Null

Write-Host "Reconnecting drives...." -ForegroundColor Cyan
Write-Host "Press the CTRL+C hot key combination to cancel." -ForegroundColor Cyan

while ($MappedDrives -and (Get-Date) -lt $endTime) {
    $error.clear()
    foreach ($MappedDrive in $MappedDrives) {
        if ($MappedDrive.Status -eq "Disconnected") {
            if (Test-Path $MappedDrive.LocalPath) {
                LogMessage "Success: $($MappedDrive.LocalPath)\ reconnected to $($MappedDrive.RemotePath)" -Color Green -Display $True
            } else {
                LogMessage "Failed: Unable to reconnect $($MappedDrive.LocalPath)\ to $($MappedDrive.RemotePath)" -Color Red
            }
        } elseif ($MappedDrive.Status -eq "Unavailable") {
            if (Test-Path $MappedDrive.RemotePath) {
                New-SmbMapping -LocalPath $MappedDrive.LocalPath -RemotePath $MappedDrive.RemotePath -Persistent $true
            }

            if (Test-Path $MappedDrive.LocalPath) {
                LogMessage "Success: $($MappedDrive.LocalPath)\ connected to $($MappedDrive.RemotePath)" -Color Green -Display $True
            } else {
                LogMessage "Failed: Unable to connect $($MappedDrive.LocalPath)\ to $($MappedDrive.RemotePath)" -Color Red
            }
        } elseif ($MappedDrive.Status -eq "Reconnecting") {
            LogMessage "Pending: $($MappedDrive.LocalPath)\ is automatically reconnecting to $($MappedDrive.RemotePath)" -Color White -Display $True
        }
    }
    $MappedDrives = Get-SmbMapping | Where-Object { $_.Status -ne "Ok" } | Select-Object LocalPath, RemotePath, Status
}