Windows XP Administrative Share C$ in Workgroup

[Michael McNamara]

I just recently re-imaged the desktop of my significant other to help clean it up. When all was said and done though I noticed I couldn't map the C$ and D$ drives (administrative shares) of her computer from my Windows Vista desktop or any desktop/laptop for that matter. I vaguely remembered that this was an issue with Windows XP. Thanks to Google I was able to find the solution again. It's interested because Vista defaults to "classic; local users authenticate as themselves" while Windows XP defaults to "all users from the network authenticate as guest".

Here's the solution... you'll need to edit the local security policy from within the Group Policy Editor. Select Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc -> Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options -> "Network access: Sharing and security model from local accounts" and confirm that it's set to "Classic - local users authenticate as themselves".

I've uploaded a screenshot of the Group Policy Editor in Windows Vista.

Cheers!

[modestgeek]

Can't say I've run into this problem. As long as I had the same account name on both computers I was able to authenticate properly from XP to Vista/7. The only problem I've run into Vista/7 with authentication has been some older Samba (Linux kernel) based systems that don't support NTLMv2. Vista and 7 by default support NTLMv2 only and a change to the local security policy is needed.

Thanks for the tip!