I have just build several PCs with Windows 8.1 Pro for my team. I have a problem with mmc.exe - it cannot seem to see any network drives. When I try to save a custom console, the dialog box only presents the local drives. If I try to open a saved file from a network drive, I get an error box saying:

"MMC cannot open the file Z:\test.msc.

This may be because the file does not exist, is not an MMC console, or was created by a later version of MMC. This may also be because you do not have sufficient rights to access the file."

If I then move the MSC file to the local disk, it opens correctly.

I can confirm that my NTFS permissions are fine (I can open the MSC file from my Z: drive just fine on my old Windows 7 PC). No matter what I do, though, MMC on the new PCs simply doesn't acknowledge the existence of any network drives. No other programs have problems with network drives - only MMC. The only thing I could find when searching for the problem was someone reporting the same symptom on Windows 7 after installing the RSAT tools, but there were no answers on that page. The RSAT tools are installed on my machines, and I have tried uninstalling them, but it made no difference. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

Iain

I think you are running into a situation due to User Account Control.

As you probablu know, UAC enforces administrators to run as a normal user by default, and 'elevate' to administrative privileges on a per process base. This measn that there are actually two user sessions: the user and the elevated one. each of those can have it's own mapped network drives.

verify if this is the case by running  bot a normal and an elevated command prompt and running net use to show the mapped drives.

then on how to solve this... this behavior is by design and as expected. you should map your drives twice: once as user and once being elevated.

A possible workaround is to disable UAC, which I would not recommend as UAC is an important security boundary

Ahhh, thank you! As soon as you mentioned UAC, it all clicked into place - I just haven't had to think about this since I built my Win 7 PC five years ago! You're a lifesaver, that was driving me crazy :)