Without your code it makes it hard to really see what's up, but if you use the UNC rather than a mapped drive you won't need for windows to reconnect or connect at all for that matter. Try something like this.

open DH, "\\\\machine\\share" or warn $!;
my @dir_listing = readdir(DH);
close DH;
[download]

That will give you an array with the contents of the directory. You don't need to connect to "x:\\whatever" as long as you know the machine and share is called. Also, if you or someone should change the drive mapping it won't matter.

Good Luck!