Many devices do not have CD/DVD drives. You can access by sharing the CD drive of a computer on your network and connecting or mapping to that drive. This shows how to map and connect with and without network discovery turned on.
Nice description, except it leaves out one important element: *seeing* the contents of the mapped drive is not the same as actually being able to *access* them (yes, I understand that this is Microsoft's twisted logic). I followed your instructions to the letter and everything worked perfectly...UNTIL I actually wanted to play the CD. The players come up...then they just sit there. Nothing wrong with the drive or discs since I can play them locally, but they won't play over the network.
As noted below, an audio CD can neither be player or burned using this system. The audio tracks appear on the non-cd computer, and even though they can be seen, they can not be played.
This doesn't work if you run a DVD game because Windows will say no DVD drive detected on this device aka it's not recognized in Device Manager. Is there a workaround?
Can the software use drive paths instead of drive letters to burn write to CD drives that has no drive letter but a NTFS folder drive path instead of drive letter , the issue is when u have over 26 CD drives and windows limited to only 26 letters a to z any alternatives thanks
Most software you would not need to map if you can access the share through your network. You just need to remember to go through the share and where it is.. more of an ease of use to map. Some software (rare) will want a mount.