Vista and Administrative Shares (C$, D$)

Aakk...

So I was trying to access a harddrive using the administrative share on a Vista computer, and I was unable to. Why? Well it seems that microsoft has disabled administrative shares in Vista.

According to Microsoft's "Vista File and Printer Sharing" site....

Sharing the Root of a Drive

Windows XP by default created administrative shares for the root folders of the fixed drives of the computer. For example, for the root of the C: drive on the computer named BobPC, Windows XP automatically shared \\bobpc\c$. The “$” at the end of the share name means that the share name will not appear in the list of shares. For computers running Windows Vista that are members of a workgroup, these administrative shares exist but are blocked for network access for security reasons. You can create your own shares to share your drives from the root of the drive, but Microsoft highly recommends that you share only the folders that you need to, rather than the entire drive.

So, Vista does not allow you to use administrative shares anymore. Unless you hack the registry ;)

From JB's Windows Vista Support FAQ ...

To allow administrators local to a computer to use their administrator powers when accessing the Vista computer remotely, please follow these steps:

1. Click start
2. Type: regedit
3. Press enter
4. In the left, browse to the following folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system\
5. Right-click a blank area in the right pane
6. Click New
7. Click DWORD Value
8. Type: LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy
9. Double-click the item you just created
10. Type 1 into the box
11. Click OK
12. Restart your computer

Now I can access the administrative share from any system!