Here are several reasons why you should never disable the default administrative shares on Windows computers, especially in an enterprise (managed) environment.
If you disable administrative shares like C$ on a Windows server or client computer, then anything that tries to access your computer via SMB will fail. This can include but is not limited to the following:
System Center Configuration Manager
SMS Inventory
Point and Print from shares on your computer
Anything else that accesses these admin shares for management purposes.
About Mitch Tulloch
Mitch Tulloch was lead author for the Windows Vista Resource Kit from Microsoft Press, which is the book for IT pros who want to deploy, maintain and support Windows Vista in mid- and large-sized network environments. Mitch was also the author of Introducing Windows Server 2008 and technical project lead for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit, both books also from Microsoft Press. For more information on these and other books by Mitch, see www.mtit.com .
Article not looking right or info is missing? Let us know so that we can fix it: .
