windows-7windows-server-2008mklink

Access is denied on mklink


I am trying to get a symlink working over a network drive.

I have already tried suggestions on questions already asked, such as running as administrator and checking if the directory already exists. Unfortunately it still gives me the following error:

C:\Windows\system32>mklink /d \\myserver\someLink \\myserver\mydir
Access is denied.

Any ideas how I could get this working? The local machine is running windows 7 and the remote machine is running windows server 2008 R2 standard.


Solution

  • I jumped through all the hoops:

    1. Create a non-admin account (in my case, activated the guest account).
    2. As Admin, run secpol.msc and grant this account Create Symbolic Link permissions.
    3. runas /user:guest cmd to open a command window as the guest.

      only to get caught on the simplest problem: because I was running as guest, I didn't have write permissions within the directory. So,

    4. As admin, change permissions in the target directory (where you want to make the link) to give write access to the non-admin user.