thanks john, going to look into this as well as the UNC
~M

>>the application starts but when it does its thiing, in this case create mobile sql server files it fives out about permissions. The mapping is correct, although strange. the folder it connects to is a subfolder, e:\data\folder1. data is shared but if you right click on folder1 it is not, but all users connect to folder1. i gave everyeon full rights to everything as a temp measure to see if i could get it working but no joy. the reason we do not use unc is that we need a mapped drive for the application
>>~M
>
>Have you tried creating a batch file using NET USE when the app starts up? I've done this many times and it always works, well usually. I assume you have a user table, with a password so, you can just create the batch file and run it dynamically.
>

>set textmerge on
>set textmerge to c:\temp\myfile.bat noshow
>\\Net use z: /delete
>\\net use z: \\192.168.1.10 /user:<<username>> <<password>>
>set textmerge off
>set textmerge to
>

>
>then you can either just do a ! c:\temp\myfile.bat or use shellexecute if you don't want to see the black box.