Unable to disable/stop sharing of a drive. The drive got administratively shared after setup of a Wireless Network.

Symptoms

1. While playing around Windows XP system, user created a Wireless Network 'f' using "Setup Wireless Network Wizard" and set a SSID and WEP/WPA.

The created wireless network 'f' is not visible, in preferred network. (It has been already deleted)

2. A Windows drive got administratively Shared during the setup process:

3. Now, when user is unable to permanently stop sharing/disable sharing. When user tries to stop/disable the sharing Windows flashes following message :

So, how to disable/stop sharing of the drive permanently?

Solution

Open regedit (Registry Edit tool), and go to registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters

and set registry-key "AutoShareWks "=dword:00000000.

If key 'AutoShareWks' is not present in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters, then right click in the right pane of the regedit and create this key of type DWORD and set it to 0.

Restart the Windows XP, sharing of the drive should stop.