The hidden administrative network share (also known as c$ admin share) is not accessible by default in Windows 10. The administrative share is automatically created but can’t be access by browsing to “\\computername\c$” from a machine on a workgroup or home network. In a domain environment the c$ share should already be available. In a workstation or home environment the administrative share can be enabled from the registry.
Enable admin share using the registry
- From the computer you’d like to enable the admin share, click Start or Cortana and immediately type “cmd“. From the list of results, right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
- Copy and paste the following command into the Command Prompt window and hit enter.
REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
- Reboot the computer.
- You can now browse to the computer’s admin share using a local administrative account of the machine. For example:
\\computername\c$
Just FYI … you can use task manager to kill all Windows Explorer processes, then (in taskmanager) start a new instance of explorer.exe (File -> Run) and this will reload the registry and make the edit valid at that point .. no restart needed.