mounting webdav folder in Windows

There probably is a more elegant way to do this, but in case anyone else needs a way to mount a folder on Windows to a WebDAV directory, here's how I did it.

1. I added the following key with a non-zero value, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEM
CurrentControlSetServices WebClientParametersUseBasicAuth (DWORD)
as described in http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2netwk.mspx#XSLTsection129121120120

This step may or may not be necessary.

2. Right click on My Computer; Map Network Drive; click Sign up for Storage or connect to a network drive;
Choose another network location;
put in the http address of your webdav directory but put an #/ after the directory as described here
eg. http://www.domain.com/mywebdavfolder#/
specify your name and password, you should be able to specify your webdav username without specifying any sort of domain (sometimes when it asks for username/password you have to specify it twice in a row);
give your web folder a name;

3. When your webfolder comes up, right click on the folder that is shown with the same name as your webdav folder, and choose Send To -> Desktop. It appears like this is a subfolder, but it actually is your webdav folder. (This whole mechanism appears to be a hack, but it does work.)

4. Now test out copying some files to to this web folder.

No, these setup procedures are pretty ugly, but it you should have a working folder on your desktop that lets you drag and drop files into it.

I'm using Windows xP professional, so hopefully this works with XP Home also.

--Brandon

I've not used webdav much... but i've seen reports that webdav on xp could be slow.

One way would be to disable the webclient service (which helps speed up accessing networked drives), and use a 3rd-party client.

I would like to try webdrive, but never got down to that. You can also try netdrive which can be found on various websites.