Can't access computer drive remotly via C$

Question

Hi ,

I think I have a setting or a service in my environment causing the issue , so when I try to browse to \computername\C$ I get the following errors.

Network Error

Windows cannot access \computername\C$

check spelling ...

Although I'm sure the computer is online

i'm using windows 10 1909

Answer 1

The account that you are logged in with needs to be a member of the administrators group on the remote machine in order to access the C$ share.

Open a Powershell prompt and run these commands using your target computer name.

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName *YourComputerName*
Test-NetConnection -ComputerName *YourComputerName* -CommonTCPport SMB
net.exe view *YourComputerName*

Do they all execute successfully?

Share out another folder and grant "Everyone" access on the share permissions. That share should then show up in the "net view" output.

Answer 2

This issue may caused by UAC remote restrictions.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/windows-security/user-account-control-and-remote-restriction

Add LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy registry entry in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

and set value to 1,

Answer 3

Enable Network and Sharing Center.

When accessing a shared computer via the "\computername\c$" method, this will cause the "access is denied" error.

Unfortunately that is the only information provided on the alert.

Note: I got stuck here, tried permissions, network reconfiguring, etc, and I wouldn't have figured it out because half of these forum posts lead to dead end answers, but an error window appeared letting me know it was disabled, then in the folder a bar appeared, once i clicked it, it enabled network and sharing and i was able to instantly access the remote computer.