@David-Pither-Patterson said:
When that happens, you lose the link
You might want to enable Settings > Preferences > Recent Files History > ☑ Don’t check at launch time, which should at least prevent them from disappearing from the MRU when you first launch Notepad++.
I’m not sure that option will be sufficient to save you if you click the MRU before the network drive has connected… but really, you’re asking a program to open a file that does not exist (from the perspective of your whole computer, not just the app). If I were in that situation, and often found myself in a race with the network remap, I would probably make a folder-shortcut to the network drive, and always open that after re-starting; once the folder was open, I would then open the file-under-consideration from the explorer window, rather than from the Notepad++ MRU, because by then, the drive is mapped.