UDrive: Connecting from Home or Office

5/21/08. Vista SP1: no longer needs another registry key set, as was noted here 3/3/08

You can connect to the "U-drive" with your own computer and almost any kind of Internet connection.  It isn't hard, and we have several levels of instructions. 

Everyone: be sure to read Essential Information and Notes below

Experts: try the Quick Instructions below

Novices: we have details with many screen shots and comments for Windows 2000 and XP, but you probably want to try the MapUDrive program.

Unix users can use smbmount (the syntax of which varies greatly among versions).  Mac OSX please see the Macs page.

Essential Information

Authentication

Beginning August 15, 2006, Access Account passwords were no longer automatically synchronized in the win.psu.edu domain.   Instead, CLC lab and classroom users log into the Kerberos "realm" dce.psu.edu for access to resources in win.psu.edu. 

Home users or staff/faculty with computers not in a domain with a trust to dce.psu.edu will have to first set a registry key to define the dce.psu.edu "realm", and reboot.  Thereafter, in the "Connect As" dialog use is dce.psu.edu\<userid> (where "<userid>" is your Access Account userid). 

Alternatively, users may install the MapUDrive program, which does both steps. 

If you do not wish to install that program, or you rather not map the UDrive as a letter but instead use the "UNC" directly, a "reg" file to set the registry is in this zip file if you have XP (see below for Windows 2000).  The contents of that file are:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\Kerberos\Domains\dce.psu.edu] "RealmFlags"=dword:00000008

A reboot is needed after making this registry change.  A HostToRealm key was added on 3/3/08 for Vista SP1, but removed later when server patches made it unnecessary.

Windows 2000

Windows 2000 computers need an additional registry setting to specify the "KDC" servers.   Please download this zip file instead of the one above and launch the reg file in it to do that.  It will create a binary value "KdcNames" with the names of the servers.   With Windows 2000 you probably have to reboot after setting that.

Network Drives

Note the "back-slashes" (\), not "forward-slashes" (/), which don't work.

Quick Instructions

Here are the quick steps for experienced users:

1. Set the dce.psu.edu registry entry and reboot.
    
2. If on a non-Penn State network, connect to PSU with VPN first.
    
3. If you have Windows 2000, or XP:
   • From Windows Explorer, map \\udrive.win.psu.edu\users as U: using dce.psu.edu\xyz123 (where xyz123 is your Access Account userid) and your Access Account password.
   • Details here.
      
4. If you have Windows 95, 98, or ME:
   • Support for these obsolete operating systems has been discontinued.
      
5. You could save your own folder as a Favorite location so you don't have to navigate down to it every time.

Notes

• You don't have to use U:; any letter is fine.
• The online backup is at \\ubackup.win.psu.edu\users.
• If you pick the "Reconnect at logon" in the "Map Network Drive" dialog, the drive will be automatically reconnected the next time you log on, but from a non-PSU network you will still need a VPN connection first.

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This page was last modified: 5/22/2008 3:45:00 PM.