what is IPC$

[Cris Wade]

HI

I have been working with NT, Samba and win 9x for a couple of years.  Any
time an NT server is set to Domain security, or a Samba server is set to
anything but share level security I have problems.  My problem is this.  I
want to allow a diverse groupe of machines to connect to the samba server
using user level access, but it always askes me for a password to connect
to \\SERVER\IPC$, but no password I use works.  This happens with NT and
Samba, so I know it isn't a bug. What exactly is the IPC$ share and why
does it show up in user security, but not share level? How can I get rid
of it so that anyone can browse my shares (but be required to provide a
user name and password to connect to a share).  This has always anoied me
in NT when I wanted to browse a domain controler from a machine that
wasn't in that domain.  I know that there are certain security concerns,
but I understand those.  I prefer to secure individual shares rather then
keeping a list of shares from getting out.  While I'm asking is there
anyway I can disable this in NT next time I need to? 

Thanks

Cris Wade