Enabling Simple File Sharing over HTTPS and/or HTTP is a requirement for mounting OwnCloud as a disk in Windows.

OwnCloud supports mounting using WebDAV, however Windows 7 doesn’t have Simple File Sharing enabled out of the box. This is a requirement for WebDAV to work.

I struggled a bit to find the info on how to do this, but when I finally got it down, why not share the knowledge, right?

So here’s a quick guide to making this work on Windows 7 and how to mount your OwnCloud instance as a disk drive:

1. Run REGEDIT (use the Windows key + R to open the run dialog box, type REGEDIT and press enter).

2. Navigate to the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\WebClient\Parameters

3. In Parameters, there should be keys like “ClientDebug“, “LocalServertimeout” etc…:
Right click and select “New DWORD (32-bit) value” (or simply “New DWORD value” if on 32-bit Windows 7).

4. Name the key “BasicAuthLevel“:
If your OwnCloud is using HTTPS, give the key the value of “1” to enable Simple File Sharing over HTTPS.
If your OwnCloud is using HTTP, give the key the value of “2” to enable Simple File Sharing over both regular HTTP and HTTPS.

5. Reboot! (May sometimes work without reboot.)

6. Run CMD to open a command prompt. (Use the Windows key + R to open the run dialog box, type CMD and press enter).

7. Run the command as shown below, where Z is used as the letter for the disk. If Z is occupied, choose another letter:

net use Z: \\myowncloud.instance.tld\remote.php\webdav /user:yourusername yourpassword /PERSISTENT:YES

In the command line above, replace “yourusername” and “password” with your username and password, used to connect to your OwnCloud instance. Also replace myowncloud.instande.tld with the url to your OwnCloud instance. This may be different depending on your setup, but it is the same address as you would type into the web browser.

The PERSISTENT:YES setting will ensure that Windows attempts to reconnect the disk on next logon.

If your OwnCloud instance is in a subfolder, for example “owncloud”, then the syntax could be:

net use Z: \\coolwebsite.tld\owncloud\remote.php\webdav /user:JohnMan76 p@ssw0rd /PERSISTENT:YES

Alternate syntaxes:

net use Z: https://www.yourserver.com/owncloud/remote.php/webdav /user:JohnMan76 p@ssw0rd /PERSISTENT:YES
net use Z: http://www.yourserver.com/owncloud/remote.php/webdav /user:JohnMan76 p@ssw0rd /PERSISTENT:YES