Tommy Nation

I daily enjoy the possibility to access the files on my other computers at home directly, without having to share the root of the harddisk using normal file sharing. I recently built a HTPC (Home Theatre PC), and as fate would have it, chose Vista for its fresh new Media Center possibilities. Problem? How to enable access to admin shares using a local administrator account remotely in Vista?

When you try to do this the same way you could in XP, you get prompted to log in, but get access denied. Apparently, for “security reasons” this option has been disabled. Thankfully, a small registry hack is all it takes to get around the issue:

1. Open regedit (<Windows> + R, type “regedit”).
2. Expand the tree to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft\ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ policies \ system.
3. Create a new key (Right click -> New -> choose “DWORD Value (32bit)”).
4. Name the key “LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy” and give it the value of “1″.
5. Click OK.