Powershell – How to restore a Windows administrative hidden share

filespowershell

As part of trying to release some files locked by a remote user over an automatic Windows hidden share (which I used to do via the Server control panel in NT4), I decided to skip doing a bulk

net file /c

and did the nuclear option of doing

net share c$ /delete

Aside from rebooting, what's the correct procedure to restore the share (preferably via the command line) ?

(The net is full of articles explaining that

net share admin$

works implicitly and that there is a registry setting and that you reboot).
Bonus points for linking to a nice explanation of the best practice equivalents of

net file

and

net share

in PowerShell

Best Answer

In PowerShell:

# Delete the share - get a WMI instance pointing to C$
# You can specify a remote machine in the moniker, if you want
$share = [WMI]"root\cimv2:Win32_Share.Name='C$'"
$deleteReturnCode = $share.Delete()
# check return code here - 0 is success
# Create the share - use the Win32_Share class.     
$shareClass = [WMICLASS]'root\cimv2:Win32_Share'
# parameters are: path, share name, share type - 0 = disk
$createReturnCode = $shareClass.Create('C:\', 'C$', 0)
# check return code here - 0 is success

Obviously you can get instances of Win32_Share and delete them, etc. if you need to. See Win32_Share documentation for error code explanations

Your other option is

net stop server & net start server

but that's a bit heavy as it will obviously disconnect everyone attached to the server

Related Solutions

Powershell – Hidden Features of PowerShell

Force Powershell functions to really return an array, even an empty array.

Due to the way the @() syntax is implemented, functions may not always return an array as expected, e.g. the following code will return a $null and NOT an empty array. If you are testing code with set-StrictMode -On set, you'll get an PropertyNotFoundStrict error instead when trying to reference the .count property:

function test
{
    #some code that might return none,one or multiple values
    $data = $null
    return @($data)
}
(test).count

Simply prepending a , to the @() will bypass the "syntactic sugar" and you'll have an actual array returned, even if it's empty:

function test2
{
    #some code that might return none,one or multiple values
    $data = $null
    return ,@($data)
}
(test2).count

Windows PowerShell – How to Diff Two Text Files

Figured it out myself. Because Powershell works with .net objects rather than text, you need to use get-content to expose the contents of the text files. So to perform what I was trying to do in the question, use:

compare-object (get-content one.txt) (get-content two.txt)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Powershell – Hidden Features of PowerShell

Windows PowerShell – How to Diff Two Text Files

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