FAQ: Can't See Network Drives with Sawmill as Service

Why can't Sawmill see my mapped drive, share, directory, or mount points when I run it as a Windows Service?

Short Answer

The Service must run with the same privileged user account that has the mapped drive, share, directory, or mount point privilege.

Long Answer

The mapped drive, share, directory, or mount point is a permission issue that involves security. It is therefore necessary to have the service run using that same privileged account that the drive was originally mapped from, or an account which has permissions to access the share, etc. If the service cannot connect as the same user that has the privilege, the network resource will not be available.

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough on how to change the service logon permission:

1. Go to Control Panel

2. Open up Services (location varies slightly with particular OS version)

3. Find the Sawmill entry (or the entry for the service running which is being used to run Sawmill and right mouse click it.

4. Select Properties

5. Under the 'Log On' tab deselect the 'Local System Account' radio button by selecting 'This account' and hit the browse button

6. In the 'Select User' dialog box, you may type in the privileged user's UserID or you may also browse for it. Once you have selected the correct user, click the OK button and the 'This account' field will be populated by a period, then a back slash () then the users' ID

7. Enter the privileged user's password twice. This will show up as asterisks. This is for security reasons and by design

8. Back at the Control Panel properties for the Sawmill entry, right mouse click and select the 'restart' option.

9. When you next run Sawmill, access to the mapped drive, share, directory, or mount point will be available

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