Get mapped network drives labels

Question

Is there a way to get mapped network drives labels? I know it's possible to get multiple properties through the

Get-Object Win32_MappedLogicalDisk 

But none of them are labels (please do not misunderstand, I do not want Name i.e. K:, I want labels i.e. My Network drive)

Answer 1

You could use the Com Shell.Application object for this:

$shell  = New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application
(Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_MappedLogicalDisk).DeviceID | 
# or (Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_MappedLogicalDisk).DeviceID | 
# or ([System.IO.DriveInfo]::GetDrives() | Where-Object { $_.DriveType -eq 'Network' }).Name |
Select-Object @{Name = 'Drive'; Expression = {$_}},
              @{Name = 'Label'; Expression = {$shell.NameSpace("$_").Self.Name.Split("(")[0].Trim()}}

# when done, clear the com object from memory
$null = [System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($shell)
[System.GC]::Collect()
[System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers()

Output:

Drive Label     
----- -----     
X:    MyCode 

---

Some explanation for the above:

Using the COM object Shell.Application, you can drill down through its properties and methods.

.NameSpace  create and return a Folder object for the specified folder
.Self       gets a Read-Only duplicate System.Shell.Folder object
.Name       from that we take the Name property like 'MyCode (X:)'
.Split      this name we split on the opening bracket '(',
[0]         take the first part of the splitted name and 
.Trim()     get rid of any extraneous whitespace characters

Another way is to go into the registry, but remember that after a mapped network folder is unmapped, the old registry value remains. This is why below code still uses one of two methods to find active network mappings first:

# the registry key to search in
$regKey = 'HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2'

# list the mapped network drives and loop through
# you can also use Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_MappedLogicalDisk
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_MappedLogicalDisk | ForEach-Object {
    # create the full registry key by replacing the backslashes in the network path with hash-symbols
    $key = Join-Path -Path $regKey -ChildPath ($_.ProviderName -replace '\\', '#')
    # return an object with the drive name (like 'X:') and the Label the user gave it
    [PsCustomObject]@{
        Drive = $_.DeviceID  
        Label = Get-ItemPropertyValue -Path $key -Name '_LabelFromReg' -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    }
}

Output here also:

Drive Label 
----- ----- 
X:    MyCode