annoying file sharing stuff with windows xp professional

I was trying to set up BackupPC to back up a couple Windows XP Professional boxes this afternoon, and ran into some problems. I couldn’t access the ‘C$’ share on the system from the BackupPC server, even when logging into the Windows box as an administrator. So, I tried creating a share for all of C:, and found that the file sharing code won’t let you set permissions for the share, or even a password! For one of the boxes, having a read-only share to the root drive open wouldn’t have been a huge deal, so I figured I’d give it a shot.. however, when I attempted a backup, I wasn’t able to get any user data out of their “Documents and Settings” folders. I finally dug around a bit more, and figured out that you can disable ‘Simple Sharing’ for XP. To do this, load an Explorer window, and go to Tools->Folder Options. Go to the ‘View’ tab, and scroll all the way down. Uncheck the ‘Use Simple Sharing (Recommended)’ option. After you do this, you’ll be able to share folders as usual (with full permission granularity and such), and you will also be able to access the C$ share if you log in as an administrator. Go Microsoft! (Yeah, that was sarcasm..)