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Konstantinos Tsoukalas

Konstantinos is the founder and administrator of Wintips.org. Since 1995 he works and provides IT support as a computer and network expert to individuals and large companies. He is specialized in solving problems related to Windows or other Microsoft products (Windows Server, Office, Microsoft 365, etc.).

12 Comments

  1. Charles Bevitt
    April 29, 2023 @ 7:55 pm

    Was trying to access the admin shares on my old Windows 10 PC from my new Windows 11 PC. Step 5 – doing the registry edit on my old Windows 10 PC – was what worked. Thanks!

    Reply

  2. Hansen
    March 6, 2021 @ 11:00 pm

    Five years after the original post and it is still helping people. Setting up veeam backup from one computer to another computer using only local accounts on each machine you have to use an admin$ share. Thanks for this.

    Reply

  3. Ilya
    April 23, 2019 @ 10:18 am

    Thank you for this amazing tutorial! You saved my life man, I struggled with configuring PSexec for a couple of days and I randomly stumbled upon your site. Have a nice day!

    Reply

  4. Aaron
    July 19, 2017 @ 9:02 am

    Gosh I don't know why Microsoft makes these configurations so annoying tedious for users. Thanks for the registry key setting. Also had to restart the system in order for that setting value to take effect.

    Reply

  5. vijay
    October 5, 2016 @ 1:17 pm

    i want to easy method

    Reply

  6. Ahmed
    January 22, 2015 @ 7:00 pm

    Brilliant , thanks for the great explanation.. really Good

    Reply

  7. serg
    October 1, 2014 @ 7:49 pm

    Y have to reboot to apply this settings

    Reply

    • No Problem At All
      December 5, 2014 @ 11:25 pm

      B/c the system only takes a lot of its cues from the registry at the time the OS loads up. To get a different interpretation, the OS needs to reload the registry.

      Reply

  8. No Problem Atoll
    September 9, 2014 @ 10:39 pm

    Only "Step 5: Modify registry settings on the computer with the Admin Shares Enabled(Optional)" is actually required for 99% of users. Unless your in a corporate shop on a domains, almost all users of Windows 7 are running there local machine with Administrator accounts. By default Microsoft restricted access to the admin share. The regkey is what unlocks the functionality.

    Reply

    • Samir
      April 14, 2015 @ 11:43 pm

      Yeah, exactly. This is true for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 as well as current build 10041 of Windows 10. You MUST modify the registry, as given in instructions above.

      Reply

      • Samir
        March 5, 2016 @ 6:38 pm

        Actually, I have just realized that the legacy "Administrator" account needs to be enabled if one wishes to skip step 5 and not make the registry edit in order to enable remote access of the admin shares in a local work group environment.

        I am running a freshly installed Windows 10 TH2 right now, and after I enabled the old legacy Administrator account I was able to access the admin shares remotely, without having to make the registry change.

        Note! It does NOT help to create a NEW administrator account. If your username is Bob and you are part of the admin group, and you create a new admin user Alice, you will still not be able to use that account to access the admin shares remotely. In that case, you MUST make the registry change as described in step five above. Otherwise you will have to enable the legacy Administrator account.

        Use one of these methods, depending on your preference.

        Method 1: Enabling Administrator
        ======================
        1. Make sure local and remote PC are joined in the same work group. Reboot booth PCs after making any changes.
        2. Enable file and printer sharing in Windows Firewall settings.
        3. Run lusrmgr.msc and enable "Administrator" account.
        4. Set a password for Administrator.
        5. Ready! You can now remotely access any admin share on the local PC.

        Note! You don't need to sign out, and then sign in as Administrator. You can remain signed in as Bob. Just remember to NOT use Bob's credentials for remote share access. Instead, you will use Administrator's credentials you just created.

        Method 2: Setting LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy
        1. Make sure local and remote PC are joined in the same work group. Reboot booth PCs after making any changes.
        2. Enable file and printer sharing in Windows Firewall settings.
        3. Run regedit.exe and navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.
        4. Create a DWORD named LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy and set its data value to 1.
        5. Ready! You can now remotely access any admin share on the local PC.

        This method does NOT require you to enable the Administrator account, nor to create any new user account with administrator permission. It will work perfectly with Bob's user account, as long as he is a member of the admin group. This would normally be your regular user account that you created during Windows setup.

        Reply

        • aha
          November 11, 2016 @ 3:56 pm

          Thanks!
          Method 1 made my day :)

          Reply

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