How To: Administrative Shares in Windows XP

When you have more than one computer in your local network, you may want to be able to access all your files on all your machines, whichever one you’re sitting at. Here’s how you can accomplish that in Windows XP:

To be able to access all files you will be using something called Administrative Shares. These are default hidden shares of your local hard disks and optical drives that are automatically created by Windows on boot-up. These shares are not like normal shared folders, as they require administrative access to open via the network.

An administrative share is a hidden share, as indicated by a trailing dollar ($) sign. These shares do not show up by default when you access a computer through Windows Explorer. To access the C:\ drive via its administrative share for instance, you would type this in the address bar of Windows Explorer: \\computername\c$ 

 

[important]In Windows XP Service Pack 3, access to the administrative shares through the network is disabled by default.

To enable administrative shares you have to:

1. Open Explorer and select Tools -> Folder Options
2. Select the View tab and scroll all the way down to the bottom of Advanced Settings
3. Make sure that “Use simple file sharing (Recommended)” is not selected

This should work instantly without need for rebooting.

Note: Windows XP Home editions do not have this option, so they cannot show administrative shares.[/important]

 

You will also need administrative rights as a local user to access these shares on a different computer via the network. To achieve this, all you have to do is to create an identically named account on each computer, with the same password. Make sure it has administrative rights (select “Administrator” when you set it up). To do this, open Control Panel and go to User Accounts and make the necessary account and/or password changes there.

Now, whenever you want access to your files on your other machines, just open Windows Explorer and type in \\Computername\c$ in the address bar – replacing the letter c with the drive letter of the hard disk you want to access.

There’s an additional administrative share that’s standard on all Windows computers, and this is the Windows folder. To access this share, type \\Computername\admin$. If Windows was installed on a different drive than the C:\ drive, it doesn’t matter when you use this share. Pretty useful when you want to view Windows log files on remote machines.

Windows 7 / Vista troubleshooting:
In Windows 7 / Vista you will get prompted to enter a username and password. Enter the username and password, and tick the box to remember the password if you don’t want to be bothered again. You may get problems here, being denied access even if you entered the correct username and password. Should this be the case, you should read my article on enabling admin shares in Windows 7 / Vista.

Benchmarking tool 3DMark Vantage released

Futuremark releases 3DMark Vantage

A few months ago, Futuremark announced their next generation benchmarking tool 3DMark Vantage. Today it has finally arrived.

I like 3DMark because it gives good indicators on where you could improve your system if its not quite up to par, and because its easy to compare your system performance with the performance of other systems like it.

The tests are all new based on DirectX 10, and take physics more seriously than earlier incarnations – which means owners of an Ageia PhysX card could see a boost in their score. I don’t have one, and I doubt you do either, but I still managed to get a score of P5308, which I hope is good. There was only one similar system to mine, not enough to get a detailed report! Time will tell as more results tick in …

Head on over to the 3DMark Vantage website for more information about Futuremark 3DMark Vantage.

Overclocking Tools

Overclocking Tools

When getting into overclocking your rig – whether you just want more frames per second out of your old 6600 GT in Call of Duty 4, or to be able to brag about a score above 20k in 3DMark06 – you’ll need the right tools for the job.

Here’s an introduction to some of the most used overclocking and monitoring tools!

RivaTuner

Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista / Windows 7
This application lets you overclock your NVIDIA graphics card. It was originally just a registry tweaking application for NVIDIAs old Riva TNT graphics card, but has since evolved into a much more useful tool. The most common use of RivaTuner is to set higher clock speeds on the core, shaders and memory of your graphics card(s), as well as letting you control fan thresholds and other settings. The registry tweaking is still an option however, shall you feel tempted.

ATITool

Windows XP / 2003 / 2000 (incl. 64-bit)
You guessed it – ATITool was made to overclock your ATI graphics card. However, today this application also works with NVIDIA graphics cards. If you have problems with RivaTuner, try this little bugger instead.

Prime95

Windows (incl. Windows 3.1) | Linux | FreeBSD | OS/2
This number crunching application lets you push your CPU to its limit of stability. The latest version supports multi-core processors using multiple threads. Tip: If you want to test only your CPU for stability, choose the “Small TTFs” torture test, and select “Round off checking” under the “Advanced” menu. This test uses the least amount of system memory, reducing the likelihood of your RAM being the culprit in case of failure, (but it will still be a factor).

External link: Guide to using Prime95 effectively.

SpeedFan

Windows 9x / NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP (incl. 64-bit) / Vista / Windows 7
This handy tool lets you monitor temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, and can even monitor hard disks with S.M.A.R.T. enabled. As a bonus feature it can adjust the FSB speed on some motherboards, but primarily I use SpeedFan to monitor the temperatures and voltages when overclocking. Tip: Disable SpeedStep (Intel) or Cool’n’Quiet (AMD) features in the BIOS to get accurate readings after OC’ing.

Core Temp

Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / Windows 7
A simple, yet useful utility that lets you monitor the temperatures of your processor cores. A nice feature of Core Temp is that all CPU core temperatures can be displayed in your system tray at all times.

CPU-Z

Windows
One of the most widely used tools for overclockers. CPU-Z gathers information about your CPU, motherboard and memory timings (including SPD values).

GPU-Z

Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Windows 7
As the name suggests, this tool is much like CPU-Z, only for graphics cards. GPU-Z gives you detailed information about your accelerator card, from make and model to clock speed and driver version. If you click the “Sensors” tab, you can handily monitor the GPU and PCB temperatures, fan speed (in per cent and RPM), and current core and memory clock speeds.

How To: Enable Remote Access To Administrative Shares in Windows 7

Longhorn

How do you enable remote access to admin shares using a local administrator account in Windows 7 / 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.

Creating Killer User Interfaces

Robert Scoble had a talk with RJ Owen, Senior Developer at EffectiveUI. He discusses how to create great user experiences for Web apps.

Click here to go to the original post on ScobleShow (new window).

Sony PSP Phone Imminent?

PSP phoneAccording to SEfanatics, there is a reference in the latest edition of the official Sony Magazine, to a PSP-style phone possibly being released as soon as this month.

I’ll believe it when I see it, but the fact remains that Sony has filed a patent for such a device, and they may be able to surprise us, or at least semi-surprise us, if the thingamajig actually appears.

My only concern would be having to charge my phone every three hours …

Update 2010: Rumours are circulating again, almost two years later. Will we ever see this phone and PSP hybrid in production? Only time will tell.