Placement:  Clark State College\General\FAQ

Last Update: 1/28/2026

Content: 

There are two types of drive mappings, the home directory (P:\ drive), and general network drive mappings like the departmental share (M:\ drive), and the Colleague share (X:\ drive) if you have access to that.  The P:\ drive mapping is different from the others in that it is mapped during the login process and requires the Global Protect VPN connection in order to map successfully.  It is because of this that the P:\ drive mapping is the most common mapping to experience issues when logging into the Clark State network remotely.

There are several steps that can be taken to minimize issues in mapping the P:\ drive successfully as follows:

• Shut down your laptop prior to leaving Clark State.  Don't just close the lid - that places the laptop in sleep mode rather than shutting it down.
• Once you get home (or the location you will be working remotely from), power the laptop back on, ensuring it connects to the local network either physically or via Wi-Fi.  If it is the first time connecting the device to the local network, you will need to reboot the laptop one more time prior to connecting to Clark State through VPN.
• After entering the BitLocker PIN, let the laptop sit at the Clark State login screen for several minutes before attempting to login.  This should give Global Protect time to establish the VPN connection to Clark State prior to your login.
• Login to the laptop and check your drive mappings.  At a minimum, you should see a home directory (P:\ drive) mapping as well as the departmental shared drive (M:\ drive) mapping.

If you have followed the steps above and still don't have one or more network drive mapping that you need, there are a few things to check:

• Make sure that the Global Protect VPN client is connected.  To do this click on the in the lower right-hand corner of your desktop.  Check the status of Global Protect...if it is connected, it should look like this .  If it is not connected, it will look like this .  If the Global Protect client is not connected, you will need to connect it.  To do so, click on the client in the Task Tray, it will look similar to the following:

Ensure that the Portal entry matches what is shown above and click on Connect.  If prompted to provide login credentials, enter <username>@CLARKSTATE.EDU and your password.

Once the Global Protect client is connected, you should now be able to manually map your home directory (P:\ drive) if needed.  To do so, open the File Explorer and in the lower left-hand pane right-click on This PC and choose Map network drive.  This should look as follows:

You will need to select the drive you want to map and enter the network path you want to connect it to.  The home directory (P:\ drive) should be mapped to \\clarkstate.edu\homes\<username>, similar to what is shown above.

The other network shares will show up periodically because they are policy-based but if you need to map the departmental share (M:\ drive) so that you can access it quickly, follow the steps above selecting the M:\ drive and entering the following network path:  \\LSRV-DC-04.CLARKSTATE.EDU\Employees and choosing Finish.