Administrative Shares (C$) Not Working in Windows 7 Workgroup Computer

While I’m preparing a different post related to this topic, I noticed administrative shares not working in my Windows 7 work-group computer. If the computer becomes part of domain, it started working for domain administrator, but in work group, no luck. After several tries and searches, this way helped me fix the issue.

By default all local drives (Partitions) shared for administrators to access over the network even when they are really not shared. These type of shares called admin or administrative shares in Windows 7. Normally it can be accessed by typing Computer IP address or name with partition letter and dollar ($) sign at the end, as shown below.

The above command will return the user name and password pop up screen if you don’t have administrative rights already on target computer. You must provide the correct user name and password to access the admin share.

In my case, I know the correct administrative user name and password, but it didn’t accept. Other network shares work fine in Windows 7 with same user name and password. So, It must be something wrong with admin share.

If you face the similar problem in accessing administrative shares in Windows 7 specially in workgroup computer, try this registry trick. It worked straight away, some people mentioned to change Local security policy, firewall settings and some more, but none of them worked except below method.

How to Fix.

1) Open registry.

2) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE-Software-Microsoft-Windows-CurrentVersion-Policies-System

3) Add a new value DWORD ( 32 Bit or 64 Bit, depends on OS version), name it 

LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy and give value 1. Restart the machine and check the share now. It must work.

Example of registry