Treating Network Paths Locally?

I'm trying to create shortcuts to all the shares on my network that I can then copy to every machine. The problem is that if the path uses the network share syntax (\\computer1\sharedfolder), and I open the link on the computer where it exists, it opens as a network share rather than defaulting to it's local location.

For the sake of argument, let's say

\\computer1\downloads

links to, on computer1

c:\downloads

If I'm on computer1 and I open \\computer1\downloads, is there any way to get it to open c:\downloads as c:\downloads (in the address bar)? Among a few issues that arise when I open local folders as network shares, if I try to move large files within the drive, if I have a window open with a local address and a window with a network address, even if it's the same drive, it's treated as a different drive, and, rather than a quick move, the file is copied and deleted from the source.

RoWin7 said:

I had some problems setting up my network for no logical reason. I finally put links to my network shares in the folder users\public. Each computer has the shares of the other computers, and opens the correct folder when clicked. Test it with one folder.

Thanks for the reply. My network links open the correct folder anywhere I place them. The issue is that they open as network shares on the machine where they're located, instead of recognizing them as being local and opening them as a non-unc path.

I think I can achieve this with a batch file (check computer name, if computername = \\computername\, then open c:\localfolder, otherwise, open \\computername\networkshare), but it seems like an extraordinary amount of work to achieve something that windows should natively do- or be configured to do. At it's core, its pretty simple. It's just a matter of windows saying "you've given me a network path to a local drive, since it's local, I'm going to act locally."

Thanks, again.

A batch file based shortcut is pretty easy. It's just one line:

start \\computername\sharedfolder

I'll probably end up with a total of about 35 shared folders, so I'll probably do some kind of merge to build the bat files, since the syntax for all of them will be the same.