Connecting to administrative shares remotely in a workgroup

Here’s a  useful quick hit. By default in Windows Vista and 7 you cannot connect to administrative shares on other PCs in a workgroup (C$, admin$). This is the case even after enabling file/print sharing, opening the firewall, etc. Yes, you could just create a share on C:\ named something else but I want to connect to the hidden root without creating additional shares.

To do this open regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Create a new 32-bit DWORD value called LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy and set its value to 1.

Enabling this registry entry builds an elevated security token that allows for remote administration and access to the administrative shares.

Reference:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947232