Windows NT

[Orion Mazzor]

I just recently switched to NT Workstation for developing, and need to turn OFF the sharing. Whenever I reboot, NT shares all my drives, and my WINNT directory. I can't have any shares with a full time connection to the net.

Alternatively, I heard that there is a packet filter that blocks the sharing ports, or a small firewall program.

Thanks!
Lee

[Stuart Ledwich]

In NT, I you must have your drives shared or you will not be able to get access to them even locally. NT is very strong in user security. Even though you may be on a network, only users you give access right to look at your files from within User Administrator, will be able to logon to your shares.

*Warning* do not remove the default shares, you could render your drives unusable.

[Jitendran]

Regarding your problem, Consider u have two partitions(logical) say C and D. You have installed Windows NT software on C drive. Then it creates a directory winnt. Now when u try to install any other software on the D drive then the system immediately shares the winnt directory. This is done for administrative purposes and will not be visible to anyone who logs into your machine thru' N/W. This default permissions should not be altered as it would create problems when u do administrative log ins.
I suppose this will help u. Just in case u need more info then ask me.

Software Engineer,
ICIL,
Mile Post No.4,
Nagar Road,
Pune-14.

Ph: +91-20-6684001/2/3/4/5 ext 627

[ZogMan]

You can turn off the administrative shares in NT by adding the following registry key to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters

Add: AutoShareServer as a DWORD
Value: 0

This will disable the automatic creation of C$, d$, Admin$, etc. administrative shares.

-ZogMan

[Orion Mazzor]

Made the change, rebooted, but the shares are still there. So far, the only way to turn the shares off that I have found is to turn off the "Server" service, which also disables the "Computer Browser" service (needs to be disabled as well). I haven't had _any_ problems. NT seems just as happy to have those services turned off. Any idea what those services are used for?

[ZogMan]

The Computer Browser service allows you to browse other computers on the network, including their shares. The Server service is what maintains the sharepoints on your local machine. Without this no one will be able to access your machine through the network. NT itself will work just fine without either of these services.

The reason the shares still existed after you rebooted - sorry I forgot to mention this - but after you set the AutoShareServer key to 0, then go through and actually remove the shares by hand.
(Go to Control Panel->Server->Shares to see all of your current shares.)

FYI: I'm a sysop for the Navy and we turn off these administrative shares all the time for security reasons.

-ZogMan