Why can I not access administrative shares from Windows 7 or Windows 8 ?

Someone asked me about this recently. They had a Windows 8 laptop and a Windows 7 desktop and no matter what they tried, they were unable to access the C$ on either the laptop or the desktop.

They were 100% sure they were using the correct credentials but for whatever  reason, Windows would not accept their login when trying to map a drive (\\desktopname\c$)

The issue is related to UAC and how that restricts remote connections. This has been the case since Vista and the same issue (feature 🙂  is still in Windows 8.

The issue only applies to local accounts and not domain accounts.

The quick fix is to just disable UAC but if you want to keep that running but still allow admin share access, do the following:

To disable UAC remote restrictions, follow these steps:

  1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
  2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
    Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
  3. If the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy registry entry does not exist, follow these steps:
  4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
  5. Type LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then press ENTER.
  6. Right-click LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then click Modify.
  7. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
  8. Exit Registry Editor.

The LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy registry entry in the registry can have a value of 0 or of 1. These values change the behavior of the registry entry to the behavior that is described in the following table.

Value Description
0 This value builds a filtered token. This is the default value. The administrator credentials are removed.
1 This value builds an elevated token.

 

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