Follow up to "Disabling Windows 2000 default shares" tip

Follow up to "Disabling Windows 2000 default shares" tip

This is a follow-up to the tip Disabling Windows 2000 default shares. That tip said to disable the Server service. That's fine if you never need to use any shares. But some people

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may want to disable the default administrative shares, yet still have their own.

You can do this be removing your default shares and then setting a registry key to disable the automatic creation of these default shares. All you have to do is:

  1. Click Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

     

  2. Open the System Tools folder and locate Shared Folders

     

  3. Remove any default shares (ones that end in $) that you need to. Remember to make sure none of the applications on your server or network do not rely on those shares.

Once you have removed the unneeded shares, add the following registry key and set the value to 0. It will prevent the default shares from being re-created.

  • HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesLanmanServerAutoShareServer (REG_DWORD)

    Now you can create your own shares. Removing the default shares makes it that much harder for unwanted guests to access your server.


This was first published in August 2001

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