When you map a network drive in Windows Explorer, this isn't system-wide, but only applies to the current user account. This means that an application running with administrator privileges cannot access this network drive. You can easily change this: Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value named EnableLinkedConnections with the value 1 in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System and restart your computer. Then, mapped network drives will be visible everywhere.