ADMIN$, C$, and D$ shares

[Shawn Heisey]

The shares named C$, D$, and so on are shares that only become available 
on a Windows 95 system when you are using the "Remote Administration" 
feature -- i.e., accessing the ADMIN$ share.  As soon as you connect to 
this share, Windows activates a <letter>$ share for each permanently 
mounted partition on your computer (CDROM drives and the like don't 
qualify).  

The bottom line is that if you want to be able to access the root of the 
C: drive all the time without having to fiddle with ADMIN$, you'll need 
to share the C: drive directly and not depend on Windows doing it for 
you.  If you have users that fiddle with what's shared and what isn't 
shared on their systems, then the ADMIN$ method is what you're stuck 
with.  If you implement system policies, you can curb this to some 
degree.

If you need to update a lot of computers to do this, the first part 
of the .REG bit included below may help you.  This bit shares C:\ out as 
"DRIVE_C" with full access.  If you have domain logons working, you can 
put "START /S \\<server>\\NETLOGON\BLAH.REG" in the logon script to 
ensure that this change gets made (the /S makes the registry update 
silent).  The second part of the .REG below shares out my CDROM drive as 
"CDROM" with read-only access.

The password in the .REG file is naturally the encrypted version.  To 
get a correct password entry, just set up a share on your own system and 
use REGEDIT to peek at/export this section of the registry.

If you have any questions on this, please contact me directly at 
"shawnh at simn.com"

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Network\La
nMan\DRIVE_C]
"Flags"=dword:00000102
"Type"=dword:00000000
"Path"="C:\\"
"Parm2enc"=hex:
"Parm1enc"=hex:7e,d4,16,ed,00,55,23
"Remark"=""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Network\La
nMan\CDROM]
"Flags"=dword:00000101
"Type"=dword:00000000
"Path"="E:\\"
"Parm2enc"=hex:7e,d4,16,ed,00,55,23
"Parm1enc"=hex:
"Remark"=""


Thanks,
Shawn Heisey, MIS
Dick Simon Trucking, Inc.
shawnh at simn.com

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