I have a consultant whose computer is not on the domain and needs to access various network resources. Unfortunately while adding a computer to the domain is a difficult bureaucratic process (and would disallow much of his development software from even running given the domain restrictions), we can allow him to have credentials to access network resources.

As such, he accesses various network resources via NET USE etc. without using DFS.

There is one piece of software which requires him to have the same hardcoded path as other domain users but that path is a DFS path which he can't map (i.e., the software checks the path at runtime and will only run if it matches the registered path and will reject it in the context of using a DFS versus conventional machine path)

I was wondering if there's some method to simulate the DFS path without actually using DFS.

e.g.,

the path the software needs to see is "\ABC\DFS\software\app.exe" whereas the non DFS path is "\DEF\Software\app.exe"

while I could make his hosts file point DEF to ABC, I'm not sure if I can somehow make it point there with the DFS "folder" as well

are there any methods for this short of making changes to the AD to allow him to use DFS or add him to the domain (both of which are politically/technically challenging sadly)?

Thanks guys