How To Remove the Administrative Shares in Windows XP

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From the computer of: shamanstears (678 recipes)
Created: Aug 02, 2006

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Most Windows administrators know that they can access the root volumes of domain workstations and servers by appending a dollar sign ($) to the drive letter of each root volume's hidden administrative share.

For instance, one could use the UNC statement \\Server01\c$ to connect to the root of the C drive of the Windows domain server named “Server01” provided they had the proper domain administrator privileges.

This Registry hack allows you to remove those administrative shares manually from a Windows XP computer that should not have those shares enabled for security reasons. To enable this hack, open Registry Editor and browse to the following Registry key:

Create two new REG_DWORD values: "AutoShareServer" and "AutoShareWks" and set each value to "0". Restart the computer, and presto—no more administrative shares. You can verify your work by opening the "Computer Management" MMC console, expanding the Shared Folders node, expanding the Shares node and verifying that the hidden administrative shares no longer exist.