Map Or Disconnect a Network Drive in vb.net

There are times when working with network drives it becomes necessary in an application to create or remove a network share. We don’t want an unhanded exception if the path is not mapped correctly or if it does not exist. (often users will screw this up after it has been correctly imaged on their machine). I actually ran into this at one point at GE Healthcare. Here is a very watered down sample of this (basically for security reasons).  One caveat: The windows script host must be enabled for this to work.

' Add a COM reference to Windows Script Host Object Model.
 
Imports IWshRuntimeLibrary
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices
 
Public Class NetworkDriveMapper
 
  Public Shared Sub MapDrive(ByVal driveLetter As String, _
   ByVal networkPath As String, ByVal isPersistent As Boolean)
 
    ' Create a new shell object.
    Dim networkShell As New WshNetwork()
 
    Try
 
      ' Disconnect the drive first, forcing a permanent change.
      DisconnectDrive(driveLetter, True, True)
 
      ' Map the drive to the path.
      networkShell.MapNetworkDrive(driveLetter, networkPath, Convert.ToBoolean(isPersistent))
 
    Finally
 
      If Not networkShell Is Nothing Then
        Marshal.ReleaseComObject(networkShell)
 
        networkShell = Nothing
 
      End If
 
    End Try
 
  End Sub
 
  Public Shared Sub DisconnectDrive(ByVal driveLetter As String, _
    ByVal willForce As Boolean, ByVal isPersistent As Boolean)
 
    ' Create a new shell object.
    Dim networkShell As New WshNetwork()
 
    If IO.Directory.Exists(driveLetter) Then
 
      Try
 
        networkShell.RemoveNetworkDrive(driveLetter, Convert.ToBoolean(willForce), _
            Convert.ToBoolean(isPersistent))
 
      Finally
 
        If Not networkShell Is Nothing Then
          Marshal.ReleaseComObject(networkShell)
 
          networkShell = Nothing
 
        End If
 
      End Try
 
    End If
 
  End Sub
 
End Class

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