spring into Windows XP Service Pack 2 [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hey, I Didn't Share That Out!

If you followed along with the Shared Folders utility walk-through, you may have noticed several share names whose names end with a dollar sign ($). What's that all about? Who set those up? Well, the answer is not who, but what. XP sets up those shares, and they are your computer's administrative shares.

These are automatically set up to facilitate system administration from remote computers. They are hidden, however, as users browse the network. XP creates the following administrative shares by default:

• The Driveletter$ share, where driveletter is the root of any logical drive.

• The ADMIN$ share, which points to the Windows XP installation folder, which is \Windows by default.

• The IPC$ (Interprocess Communications) share, which allows remote administration of a computer and is used to view shared resources.

• The PRINT$ share, which is present for remote printer administration.

In fact, any share with a dollar sign ($) after the share name will be hidden when using utilities like My Network Places. You can also create hidden shares for your own purposes by simply appending a dollar sign to the share name. This is a good way to store regularly needed files while keeping those files safe from the curious.

If you try to administer the administrative shares, you may be in for a surprise. You cannot change the settings of administrative shares, such as permissions. You might even notice that if you try to stop sharing an administrative share, it will be shared out again if the computer reboots. Does this mean that just anyone who has knowledge of these hidden shares can access your drive and wreak untold havoc? No. Someone connecting to these shares can only do so in the context of an administrator account.

Since the share name is hidden when browsing, you can only connect to a shared resource by specifying its name exactly, as in Start | Run… \\servername\c$.