On Windows 7, if UAC is enabled and you open Command Prompt with “Run as Administrator”, you won’t see the mapped drives either. On Windows 8, you’ll notice that even when UAC is disabled, you still have to “Run as Administrator”.
The reason why Administrator doesn’t see the mapped drives is explained in the Technet article you linked. In a nutshell, you are running with only an Administrator token, and the mapped drives are given to the Standard user token. Windows 7 with UAC disabled runs the Command Prompt with both tokens.
The resolution in that article also works with Windows 8. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System, create a DWORD value of EnableLinkedConnections, set it to 1, and restart.
