You should definitely abandon the network drive mapping possibilities:
- using this technique forces you to manipulate 'physically' each computer using your db, where you have to assign a letter to the network drive.
- every computer user can easily change it
- any disconnection from the network might force the user to 'manually' reconnect to the disk drive
Though you are on a domain, I would not advise you to use a name, as computers, for multiple reasons, might not always find it 'easily' on the network, specially when its IP is regularly changed.
You should definitely find a way to assign a fixed IP to your disk: it is the most stable and permanent solution you can think about. Ask your domain administrator to arrange it for you.
Testing the presence of your network disk can then be done very easily. There are multiple solutions, including trying to open directly the mdb file. You could also test the existence of the file (through the file object I think) or even use any external program or windows API that you could launch from your code. Please google 'VB test IP' or something similar to find a solution at your convenience.
EDIT: windows has even a proposal to simulate a ping with some VB code. Check it here
EDIT2: I found in one of my apps this VBA code, which allows to quick-check if a file exists (and can ba accessed) somewhere on your network. It was basically set to test if a new version of the user interface is available.
Function fileIsAvailable(x_nom As Variant) As Boolean
On Error GoTo ERREUR
Application.Screen.MousePointer = 11
Dim fso as object
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If Not fso.FileExists(x_nom) Then
fileIsAvailable = False
Else
fileIsAvailable = True
End If
Set fso = Nothing
Application.Screen.MousePointer = 0
On Error GoTo 0
Exit Function
ERREUR:
Application.Screen.MousePointer = 0
debug.print Err.Number, Err.description
End Function
You can easily call this function by supplying your file's network name, such as:
if fileIsAvailable("\\192.168.1.110\myFileName.mdb") then ...
