Would there be any problems to access application stored in network drive

Question

I have a .exe application file that I plan to store in a network drive which many computers have access to. The purpose of the app is to retrieve information about the computer it is run in.

The idea is to only have 1 copy of the app in case changes need to be made, so instead of updating the same application on X number of computers, we could just update the one in the network drive and then such changes would be available for everyone.

This application is not to be installed in the network drive, it would need no installation, just storing the file so it can be executed is enough.

Each computer would then have to have a scheduled task to run the application at specific moments, using the drive's own IP as part of the file address.

My question is, would there be any problems regarding access to the application?

I have tried this myself and it seems to work, although I'm still not sure how it would work out if multiple users tried to execute it at the same time, or very close in time to each other at least.

Also, the network drive needs a user and password to access, this however is the same for any user that needs to store or retrieve files from it, with all permissions, usually this connection is already open, but there may be cases where the user needs to login, would the scheduled task fail to access the application then, or would it just ask for the login credentials and, if so, could they be added to the scheduled task arguments?

This question is for Windows 7 and Windows 10.

Answer 1

If the client side is making a temporay copy of the executable, you should be covered.

Answer 2

Since the program doesn't need installation you should have no problem with a setup like that as long as the program only reads data, when programs are executed their files are opened with shared read, regarding this it would the same that launching several copies in your computer from the local disk (but with a disk that can disappear in any moment :-).

The only problem (apart from network outages) would be if the program update a file and multiple users launch the program at the same time, but that would be also a problem in a local disk.

A coworker maintains for some clients a third party legacy application which use an scheme like that and it works fine, on installation he setups a shared folder in the server (or in the computer that is most time up if the client don't have a server) and the rest of computers execute the program an read data from the share.

Also, my recommendation is map a network drive in each computer instead of directly using network path, is a bit more work but it have some advantages:

• Some programs freak out with network paths because they expect a drive letter at the beginning of the path.

• When you create the network drive you can specify user and password for accessing the network share and this is guaranteed to be saved and used every time. When you just access the share from Explorer and check the option of saving credentials it usually works, but from time to time that credentials are "lost" and you have to reenter them again (I experienced this some times in several computers but I still don't know what makes Windows discard the saved credentials).

• If the credentials of the network share change you just recreate the drive with the new credentials, instead of finding where the credentials store is located (because it location changes in almost every version of Windows) and searching for the old credentials in the list, which is a bit cumbersome if you have a lot of credentials saved.

Finally, when you setup the scheduled task you should configure it to run with the account which has the network drive created or the credentials saved, because both of them are saved per login. If you use another account you need to enter the credentials or create the network drive logged in with that account.