What's your perl code that's launching the "NET USE" command? Besides marto's note of net use /? for the proper syntax, be sure to check your command string with a debug statement -- especially make sure you've escaped the backslashes properly...

my $cmd = "NET USE x: \\jones\backup /USER: james /PASSWORD: xxxx";
warn $cmd;     # whoops!!
system($cmd);  # because of the bad value of $cmd (see output), this w
+ill not do what you want.
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