I am used to remotely connecting to the file system on my computers via administrative shares. On previous versions of Windows, the hard drive volumes were automatically exposed as administrative shares - C$, D$ and so forth. The "$" at the end of a share name makes it invisible to network browsing, but otherwise it is a regular share. As the name implies, administrative shares are only available to those in the Local Administrators security group.

As some of you are aware, I am fighting my way valiantly through a newly installed Vista RC1 system. In fact, the only reason I haven't put XP back on is because I'm too lazy. Several of my peripheral devices (sound card, web cam, video capture card, etc.) either don't work at all, or only work with partial functionality. Well, add administrative shares to that list.

Now, browsing around the system using the usual tools, it would appear as though Vista does indeed set up the normal set of administrative shares. Except you can't connect to them remotely. I checked the new Network Center settings. I checked the firewall settings. I enabled the Administrator account (which is disabled by default in Vista). I even stood on my head while balancing a rock on one foot. Nothing worked.

Back to the great oracle of the Internet. You know, the oracle is a font of knowledge but it's not very forthright with its information. You have to poke it and prod it before it will reveal the answer that you seek. After going down several blind alleys, I found the answer: you have to make an addition to the Windows Registry. What an absolute scourage on the face of personal computing the Registry is. It is such a mess of settings, parameters, and configurations that it should just be summarily executed. I'm not sure if it's any better than the multitude of INI files it was designed to replace.

Anyway, the Registry setting you have to add is a DWORD called "LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy" in the following location:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

The value of the new DWORD setting has to be 1.

Thanks to Jimmy Brush, Wugnet.com, and Google (for caching the page 'cause the original search result pointed to gobblygook) for supplying this answer: http://forums.wugnet.com/vista/Problem-hard-drive-ftopict11749.html#49308)