Hi,I was wondering how to enable File and Printer sharing on Windows 7 Through Group Policy. I have enabled the policy called: Allow inbound file and printer sharing exception.But when I go to advanced sharing settings, it's still turned off.Windows Server 2003 AD Domain, and I'm using the Group Policy Manager from my Windows 7 machine to edit the policy. Any ideas?

I would also like to be able to do this with the same server client setup. 2003 R2 DC and win 7 clients. Mine is for the remote deployment of Sophos AV software. I have created windows firewall port exceptions for AV which appear to have taken ok. Should I do the same for file and print or is it a different or more appropriate way?

Hi, Based on my knowledge, there is no Group Policy setting for enabling and disabling File and Printer sharing. To do this, you may need to write a script and you can go to our Scripting Forum for help. In addition, I would like to share the following with you: Enable or Disable File Sharing for a User or Group by Using Group Policy Network and Sharing Center Group Policy Settings Hope this helps. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT

To use the administrative shares on remote computers in your domain, ie, \\computer\c$, etc, this can be achieved through a firewall setting, which you can configure through computer-level GPO security options. Open the firewall management snapin in the GPO editor, and filter by group = file and printer sharing, enable those services you want; you may also want to filter by network discovery, enabling those ports as well. --- ian

Hi "Methodman85", I was wondering if you have a working script to enable the file and printer sharing on windows 7 systems. Hopefully you can share us how you did this? best regards Danny

You should be able to run this command as an administrator on a Windows 7 machine to enable File and Print mode, which enables the admin shares: netsh firewall set service type = fileandprint mode = enable