I Want My File Access Old Skool!

Windows 7 is hands down the best operating system Microsoft has put together.  It trounced Vista without ever breaking a sweat and gave us the successor to XP we were waiting for.  Even with all this whiz bang coolness there are still a couple of things about Windows 7 that make me want to punch a Microsoft developer in the throat. 

For me it’s all the little, unnecessary changes they made to stuff which worked well.  Making things hard to find by changing the names of the usual configuration places or taking what used to be one section of settings and breaking it across three separate locations.  I understand redesigning in the name of progress, but scrambling things up just to be different does not make things better.

Case in point, administrative shares, which worked like a champ in XP only to be neutered in Windows 7.  Since we’re all members of the uber nerd club (send us 3 box tops for your secret decoder ring) I shouldn’t have to explain what administrative shares are, but just in case you’re having a brain fart or reading this on a Monday morning, administrative shares are hidden shares which allow direct access to a hard drive through a network path. 

They look something like this:

and can be accessed via UNC like this:

With the right credentials these admin shares made it a snap to move files between multiple machines.  You’d think with having this functionality in their product for almost a decade they would consider it part of the feature set and leave it alone…. wait, we’re talking about Microsoft here.  Whenever people get even a passing familiarity with one of their product names they change it (i.e. ISA –> TMG; LCS –> OCS; ADAM –> AD LDS… I could go on forever.)  I shouldn’t have been surprised they put a bullet in admin shares, but the alternative they provided was just lame.

HomeGroups killed the radio star

With Windows 7 Microsoft introduced HomeGroups, yet another way to share files across your LAN.  In an attempt to make it more approachable for average Joe’s they jammed a pre-built "simple file sharing"-style setup into explorer.

Using a password you can have multiple machines join the HomeGroup and file sharing is automatically allowed.

In theory this is a decent concept and on its own is a feature that can be easily ignored.  The problem is that in enabling HomeGroups they disabled access to admin shares.  Why choose one over the other instead of having both co-exist is beyond me.

*side note* IMHO I think Microsoft missed the boat completely.  People have moved beyond sharing files across computers and into more centralized media center setups.  With easy to use devices like Western Digital TV and Seagate FreeAgent Theater there’s no reason to juggle files between machines when accessing your data is as easy as picking up the TV remote.

Resurrecting Admin Shares

Getting admin shares to work again takes a little legwork.  First off, we’re going to get rid of HomeGroups for good.

1. Go to the Control Panel
2. Click on HomeGroup (use the search box if you’re having trouble)
3. Click Leave the homegroup
4. Click Leave the homegroup and then Finish

Now for the double tap to make sure the bastard never comes back up.

1. Go to Start –> Run
2. Type in services.msc
3. Look for the following two services: HomeGroup Provider & HomeGroup Listener
4. Stop them and then Disable them
5. Light up a post-kill smoke and enjoy a glass of Scotch

That takes care of the interloper, but we still need to bring admin shares back to life.

1. Go to Start –> Run
2. Type in regedit <—you know this is gonna be fun
3. Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
4. Look for LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy
5. If it exists, skip to Step 8
6. If it doesn’t exist then click the Edit menu, select New, and click DWORD Value.
7. Type LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then press ENTER
8. Right click LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then click Modify.
9. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.

Viola! Admin shares are accessible again.  Now we can get back to transferring 8GB ISO files between machines on our wireless networks   And for my finale I leave you with this…

Direct link for RSS and email subscribers… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laZw3Y3JCJ8

If you found this post useful, please consider following us on twitter. You’ll be the first to learn about new posts, and, rarely, we’ll share a comedic or witty tweet. Of course, you can also leave a comment below (anonymous allowed) to let us know we hooked you up.

You might also enjoy:

1. Let me out! Configuring outbound access rules in TMG 2010
2. howto://set page file and crash handling with wmic
3. howto://print to file without specifying a path each time
4. howto://make Windows 7 file transfers fly

Tagged as: howto, windows