Mapped Drives Missing from Elevated Program in Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10

When a user opens an application that requires elevation (Right Click and Run as Administrator), They are unable to access any mapped drives which may stop them from being able to save their work.

With the introduction of User Account Control, Windows handles connections separately when ran as administrator for security purposes. You can learn more about this from this Microsoft KB Article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/937624

To work around this issue, perform the following:

1. Open the registry editor by clicking Start and typing Regedit , then pressing the Enter key.
2. Navigate to HKEY_Local_Machine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. Create a new DWORD item named EnableLinkedConnections and set the value to 1
4. Reboot the computer

After this, the mapped drives will be accessible when programs are ran as administrator.

Tags: 10788.1AdministratorAsDrivesMappedMissingregeditregistryRunUACWindows