The network folder specified is currently mapped using a different user name and password

Issue

In Windows, if you try to map a drive and that mapping attempt fails it can hold a connection open to that server using the failed credentials and preventing you from re-mapping the drive with new credentials. If you use the mapping dialogs it will show you drives you can unmap but it won't show you connections that are open that aren't officially mapped. In that event you might receive one of the two errors:

Error 1

The network folder specified is currently mapped using a different user name and password. To connect using a different user name and password, first disconnect any existing mappings to this network share.

Error 2

Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed. Disconnect all previous connections to the server or shared resource and try again.

Resolutions

In order to establish a new connections you can disconnect the previous connection from the command line. From a terminal (cmd, Windows Terminal or Powershell) you can use the net use command to list open network connections. If the drive is mapped it will show the letter under the Local column otherwise that column will be empty. In order to disconnect an unmapped server connection you can use net use /delete <Remote>; (Remote being the value listed under the Remote column of the net use command).

net use example output

PS C:\> net use

Status       Local     Remote                    Network

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK           B:        \\file-server\Webs        Microsoft Windows Network
OK           H:        \\file-server\PersonalDrive
                                                Microsoft Windows Network
OK                     \\second-server\C$
                                                Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.

If you're trying to make two connections to the same server with different credentials it gets a bit trickier. One workaround to allow for this to happen is to connect to the second server with the dotted IP address instead of the friendly DSN name. Another option is to register multiple DNS names for the server and use a unique name for each purpose. This behavior is by design and the following two workarounds are recommendations from Microsoft.

Reference:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/networking/cannot-connect-to-network-share

The content of this was tested with Windows 11.