Report on remote users mapped drives

Question

After a very thorough search, I can't find anyone else who has had this question answered.
I have a need to on-the-fly report on the mapped drives and their letters of users on remote computers. Running "Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_MappedLogicalDisk | select Name, ProviderName" only returns my drives under my credentials, not the remote user. Looking
at HKU:\sid\network apparently only reports persisent mapped drives or drives mapped by the customer and not drives mapped by logon script that are not persistent.
There doesn't seem to be a way to do this on-the-fly which is dissapointing, so I'm hoping you'll have a trick up your sleeve!
The only way I can figure to get the information, but not on the fly, is to have a logon script run as the user and grab the info and save it somewhere. I'm really hoping not to resort to that. All of that becomes historical info and won't reflect changes
that happen after logon, so it's not going to always be a true reflection of reality.
The key seems to be running a wmi query as someone else that you don't have credentials for. Is that possible? Or do you have another suggestion?
Ian

Answer 1

I believe this post may already be closed.  I, however, would like to add my findings:  When I run this against different pc's with different users logged on:  Get-WmiObject
-Class Win32_MappedLogicalDisk -ComputerName <remote computer> | select Name, ProviderName
(Keep in mind that I'm a local admin on my pc as well as the destination pc's
as well.)
1. The logged on user is non-admin on their pc.
Mapped drives are not retrieved
2. The logged on user is admin on their pc.
Mapped drives are retrieved
3. I'm logged on to the remote pc (local admin)
Mapped drives are retrieved
Conclusion:  As long as the target pc logged on user is local admin on that pc then the
mapped network drives will be pulled by the previously mentioned command.  Otherwise, it will come back empty.
A question posted previously was:  "I'm
curious why you need to know mapped drives??" In my case, I am trying to back up mapped network drives for all domain users.  However, logon or logoff scripts are not
an option.
The real question should be: Why is the previously mentioned command not pulling the mapped network drives when the logged on user is not a local admin on the target pc?
I believe the answer is that the drives are not mapped to the remote computer per se, but to the user's process on the remote computer. And while an admin on that computer has significant power over the hardware and operating system, it cannot take control
of the process, which is locked by the user's credentials.
Consider remote control. My regular account is logged onto another computer. I run mstsc to establish a remote control session on that remote system under the same credentials. The effect is to disconnect the other remote session and lock the system on its
console, and for the new session to inherit the original process, seeing the same desktop with the same apps open.
I then run mstsc to establish another remote control session, this time using an account that is an administrator on that system. It tells me my regular account is already logged on, and gives me two options, abort my new session, or log the user out. using
my admin credentials, I cannot take over the user's session and see what applications he has open or what drives he may have mapped.
Al Dunbar -- remember to 'mark or propose as answer' or 'vote as helpful' as appropriate.