Windows 10: How to temporarily disable disconnected network drives but not delete them

Hi all,I work from home and require running a company VPN to have access to the drives I need for work. The problem is despite them being disconnected, while I'm not working, many programs including file explorer try to access these drives presumably to check capacity which causes a long hang-up until it times out. Unfortunately this causes a lot of problems with my PC, especially with file explorer and other launchers that need access to drives. An example is if you right click a disconnected drive, file explorer will hang for quite some time probably 30 seconds.I was wondering if there

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Unable to disconnect from mapped network drive

I receive the following error when I try to disconnect from a self mapped network drive: "network connection does not exist"

The network drive icon appears with a bid red x and says it is disconnected, yet I can double click on it to enter the mapped folder. Doing this does not reconnect the folder, and remains disconnected. This causes problems because programs that pointed
to this path are unable to read the files. I am unable to remap this drive because the associated drive letter (E and mapping no longer shows up in the list.

I've tried all the typical suggestions including:

--I tried to do it via the command prompt with the net use delete command, but it can't be found in there.

--Tried to above with the actual network path instead of the drive letter, did not work

--Tried to delete the registry entries from:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2

HKEY_USERS\. Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Mountpoint2\

None of these solutions worked. Though deleting the registry entries momentarily hid the disconnected drive, the drive letter was still not available for mapping. I tried to force the drive letter (E to map to my optical drive, which worryingly, pointed
back to the mapped network location on the NAS instead of to the optical drive.

How do I get rid of this? Reformatting the computer is not an option.

 

Deleting Mapped network drive

I have all my music files on a WD MyCloud drive which is connected to my home network. I previously mapped my M:/ drive to the music folder on my MyCloud drive via it's IP address. Then the IP address of the MyCloud drive changed and the drive showed as
disconnected. But the drive's contents are still readable and writable by windows explorer But now I cannot disconnect the drive (This Network Connection Does Not Exist) And the drive no longer appears in the list of mappable drive letters under Map a Network
drive. My question is how do I delete this disconnected network drive so I can re-map it again with the correct URL.

***Original title: Previously mapped network drive now showing as disconnected but is still readable and writable.***

 

Windows 10 Drive Mapping showing Disconnected Network Drive

I have a NAS (WD My Cloud) on my home network and I have always added a drive on my networked computers using drive M as their Music drives. But recently My Network drive went down and I had to reinstall all the files on it's replacement drive. I gave
the new network drive4 the same IP address on the network and everything else (All the other drive mappings for my Documents Drive, my Downloads drive, my Pictures drive, etc. Nut my music drive keeps showing Disconnected Network Drive. But now I cannot delete
the drive mapping. It tells me Network drive does not exist. I have tried all of the suggestions from other threads including using Command prompt commands and everything else I have seen but it still shows up as a Disconnected Network drive. I can rename
the drive as Music again and I can always access the drive4 even when it is listed as Disconnected Netowork Drive but I cannot add any more files to it and I cannot manipulate any of the files on the drive. I can listen to the music files through most of my
players but I cannot edit any of the metadata on the files. How do I get my drive fully functional again?