VMware Shared Folders – The Network Name Cannot be Found

If VMware Shared folders have suddenly stopped working and you get this message:

The network name cannot be found

This is probably because the mapped network drive has been mapped using the old way of mapping, which isn’t really supported. You probably updated VMware tools and now the network name can’t be found because it no longer exists as a valid shared folder mapping.

To fix this, change the mapped network drive from \\.host\Shared Folders\path to \\vmware-host\Shared Folders\path. Path being the path you want to map to within your VMware Shared Folders directory. You should now find that you no longer get a Network name cannot be found error on your VMware Shared Folder mapped network drive.