Access Win10 PC via Android ES File Explorer

I've been accessing my Win10 network computers using WiFi at home with my Samsung Galaxy S7 running X-Plore. This has worked quite well until the latest Fall Creators Edition (1709) came out last month. Two of my three computers updated right away and I immediately lost access to them. The third was still fine until it updated yesterday and now I have no access. This has to be something with the increased security in the new windows release, but I haven't found out what to tweak yet. I did try turning off the new Windows Defender Firewall on the local network as a test, but it didn't make any difference.

There has to be a way to get the android stuff to connect. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

The issue:
Adminstrative shares are default shares of all the disk drives on a Windows computer. These allow access to the root disks remotely.
(my guess is that any shares made by an administrator account also falls into the "administrative shares" category)
If you try to connect to adminstrative shares (for instance C$ or D$) on a remote computer running a newer version of Windows than Windows XP, you will not be able to.

The solution:
First, you need to have a local account with administrative rights on the computer you want to connect to running Windows 10 or older.

You may need to enable Advanced Sharing. Right-click any disk drive using File Explorer and click “Properties”. Then click “Advanced Sharing” and turn on file sharing when it asks if you want to enable it. (Don’t share the disk drive, just close the dialog box.)



Now, at this point, you can connect to a remote share (i.e \\SERVERNAME\c$) but get prompted to enter a username and password.

If you enter the username and password of the local account on the server, (i.e \\SERVERNAME\MyAdminUser), you still get an error message.

This is because of a default security policy that disables access to adminstrative shares.

Thankfully, a small registry hack is all it takes to get around the issue by creating a policy manually that overrides the default setting. Do this on the server that has the shares you want to access remotely:

1.Click the Windows Start icon and search for “regedit”. Right-click and select “run as administrator”.

2.Expand the tree to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft\ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ policies \ system.
3.Create a new key (Right click -> New -> choose “DWORD Value (32bit)”).
4.Name the key “LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy” and give it the value of “1”. Click OK.

5.Reboot the server to enable the setting to take effect.
6.Now when you try to access the administrative shares on the remote computer, it should magically work.


THE SHORT METHOD
command line:
reg add
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Sorry for the thread necro, but I have finally found a solution to this ... at least on my machine:

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Select Programs > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off > SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support.
3. Check SMB 1.0/CIFS Client [and Server*], and then press Enter.
4. Go to Start.
5. Go to Search, enter the word Services, and press Enter.
6. Change the Startup type property to Automatic for the following services: Function Discovery Provider Host, Function Discovery Resource Publication, SSDP Discovery and UPnP Device Host
7. Restart the system.

*The original instructions I found here only said to check client. That may work, but I clicked server as well and then did the rest - so I don't know if that matters.

Cheers!

Shawn Cook, thanks for sharing your solution. I no longer use Android ES File Explorer, which I had used for years, purchasing the ES pro version. I now use Catch!, which uses wi-fi and (on my Win10 PC) C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Catch! Transfer files from PC to Android & iOS with Catch! - DAEMON-Tools.cc
Catch! is a free part of DAEMON Tools Lite, although I bought the Personal License.

Another android app which I always use is 'Karma FW', free from Google Play Store. It is a tiny firewall with which you can see succinct info on every android app which uses the internet. You can individually toggle internet access on/off on each program. Whether on or off, viewing which programs use no data (in white), use some data with date (in green), or have been blocked with date (in red). I toggle some apps on/off when I want to use them. It's interesting to see which apps access the internet without using them. Google Chrome is one of those, attempting to access the internet every day. I never use Chrome, and haven't blocked with Karma FW.

Also on Windows/iOS/android, my family uses Signal, a secure messaging app, which also does video calls. https://www.signal.org/