Vista Compatibility Team Blog

UAC and Remote logon

 

It mentions the following:

 

"When a user with an administrator account in a Windows Vista computer's local Security Accounts Manager (SAM) database remotely connects to a Windows Vista computer, the user has no elevation potential on the remote computer and cannot perform administrative tasks. If the user wants to administer the workstation with a SAM account, the user must interactively log on to the computer to be administered."

 

We came across an interesting manifestation of this when using the "net use" command to connect to an admin share on a Vista machine (MachineV for now) from an XP machine (MachineX). Both machines were in separate unrelated domains. When using "net use m: \\MachineV\c$ * /user:MachineA\Abby" from MachineX (where Abby is member of the administrators group on MachineV) we got an error 5 or Access Denied. So apparently when the SAM account Abby was logged on to MachineV, we got the filtered token. If Abby were a domain account and both machines were in the same domain, I would be able to connect to the admin share c$.

 

There is however a UAC flag in the registry that allows you to toggle this behavior for local accounts:

 

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system\LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy.

  •    0 - build filtered token (Remote UAC enabled)
  •    1 - build elevated token (Remote UAC disabled)

 

If you set the DWORD entry to 1, you will be able to connect to the admin share since the remote login is not filtered.

 

Obviously this is not restricted to "net use" but applies to all variations of remote account logins.

 

Maarten

 

Published Friday, September 22, 2006 10:12 PM by VistaCompatTeam

Comments

 

CaseyB412 said:

I can connect to a remote admin share, using a local admin user, but I am getting access denied (5) when then trying to view the HKLM registry key in regedit, or trying to view event logs on the remote machine.  If I connect to the admin share with my domain credentials, and my domain ID is in the local admins group on the remote machine, I can view the HKLM key and event logs.  Have you run across this issue?  Both machines are in the same domain.  Running Vista Enterprise.  

August 7, 2007 3:04 PM
 

Zugriff auf administrative Freigaben von Vista mit Windows XP » Stefan Macke said:

July 6, 2008 10:58 AM
 

Zugriff auf Freigaben klappt nicht | hilpers said:

January 18, 2009 5:30 AM
 

Can you enable the Admin Shares Drive$ in a workgroup | keyongtech said:

January 18, 2009 12:01 PM
 

Vista Compatibility Team Blog UAC and Remote logon | debt consolidator said:

June 15, 2009 3:49 PM
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