If I'd had unfettered access to the system for a long period of time (both client and server), I would have been investigating the path of why the credentials weren't automatically working. Generally when I see that happen, it's for tricky little reasons. For example, the server could be rejecting the auto-credential login because of a domain or RADIUS problem (doubt they're using a RADIUS server but this is just an example). The client could be sending the wrong domain name to the server as part of the credentials. The client could have two shares open on the same server, and be authenticating automatically (successfully) against the other share with different credentials (windows throws an authentication error when you double-login the same client machine). That's the sort of thing I'd be looking for. But those kinds of things would require a lot of hands-on time with both the client and the server to figure out what's wrong. The batch file is quicker if it gets around her problem.