The following link details both my problem and a hotfix which should address it completely.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2878604/en-us
"...
Consider the following scenario:
- I have a computer that is running Windows 8.1.
- I have configured the value of the EnableLinkedConnections registry entry to1 to enable elevated processes to access network shares.
- I try to map a drive to a nested share by using an elevated token on the computer. For example, I try to map a drive to the following share path:\\computername\share\myshare\user
In this scenario, the drive is unexpectedly mapped to the root of the nested share. For example, the drive is unexpectedly mapped to the following path:
\\computername\share
..."
However, the downloadable patch does not seem to work with Windows 8.1... I get an error message "The update is not applicable to your computer".
Any suggestions?