Share$ names?

  • Thread starter Thread starter William W. Plummer
  • Start date Start date
W

William W. Plummer

Can someone explain to me why some share names have a trailing dollar sign.
Ex: IPC$ . It has to do with access control. But is it just a convention
or is it enforced by the operating system? Thanks.
 
$ on the end of share name makes it hidden - this is a long standing Windows
convention. Hidden shares don't show up in Windows Explorer, but you can
connect to them using Start, Run or Map Network Drive if you know their
name.

IPC$ is a special hidden share for particular types of connections - e.g.
inter computer authentication. If you attempt to connect to a Windows NT or
later computer from a Windows 9x computer you will often see a request for
the password for this share. This is because Windows 9x doesn't understand
the request from the other computer for "credentials" (e.g. username and
password). The solution is to logon at the Windows 9x computer with a
username and password known on the other (Windows NT or later) computer.
 
Thanks, Bruce. But, hidden to whom? It can't be hidden from the share
creator or he wouldn't be able to delete it.
How does anyone know the share$ exits if it doesn't shw up on Windows
Explorer lists?

Bruce Sanderson said:
$ on the end of share name makes it hidden - this is a long standing Windows
convention. Hidden shares don't show up in Windows Explorer, but you can
connect to them using Start, Run or Map Network Drive if you know their
name.
Click to expand...
<snip>
 
The administrative shares(shares with the $) are hidden so
no one other than administrators know about them. It's
mainly useful to check the entire contents of a hard drive.

For instance, typing \\computername\c$ will show you the
entire directory structure of that computer's C: drive.

This is not something every user should be doing, so those
shares remain hidden.

If you were to type \\computername , all you would see in
the window that comes up is only populated by items that
are shared on that machine as opposed to the entire
contents of that machine.
 
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