Disable “Could Not Reconnect All Network Drives” Alert on Windows 10
Network drives are a great way to give different users on the same network easy access to the same files. Once you add a network drive on Windows 10, it will automatically connect to it when you connect to the network. There’s no user interaction needed. The network drive just has to be online. In the event that the drive isn’t online, or you’re connected to a different network, Windows 10 tells you that it couldn’t connect to the network drive. If you find the ‘Could not reconnect all network drives’ notification to be unnecessary, you can disable it.
Disable ‘Could not reconnect all network drives’ alert
There are two ways to disable the ‘Could not reconnect all network drives’ alert. This alert is sent by the ‘Autoplay’ app/service. If you turn off notifications for it, you won’t get this alert any more but it will also disable all autoplay alerts e.g. when you connect a new device and you’re prompted to select a default action for it.
Open the Settings app and go to the System group of settings. Select the Notifications & actions tab. Look for Autoplay and disable alerts for it. Alternatively, you can just turn off the alert banner and have the alert go straight to the Action Center.
If you don’t want to disable alerts for Autoplay, you can disable the network drive alerts by editing the Windows Registry. Open the Windows Registry Editor and go to the following key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider
Look for the RestoreConnection value. If it isn’t there, right-click the NetworkProvider key and select New>DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name it RestoreConnection. Double-click it and enter 0 in the value data box.
Next, restart your Windows 10 PC. If a network drive isn’t connected, you will not see any notifications. When the drive is available, your system will connect to it like it always does.
The registry edit is going to change only the alert for network drives. All alerts will still show on your desktop so if you need the other alerts that Autoplay sends, this is the way to go. If you ever need to enable the alerts again, you can delete the value you created, or enter 1 in its data value box. Make sure you restart your system after making the change.
The Could not reconnect all network drives alert isn’t useless but it’s sometimes redundant when you connect to a different network. The network drive that you’ve added is on a different network and it isn’t going to connect. Users hardly need to be told that since it’s a given.
