here's my situation: 2 machines on a domain. each has a local administrator account with same name/password. I'm logged into my tech machine using my domain account, the user on the remote machine for whatever reason has removed my group from local administrators group and I need to push a software update; for some reason windows 7 doesn't allow the use of the local account I'll attempt to access the remote system via \\remote\c$ and of course get an access denied with a windows prompt because of course my domain account isn't an administrator. so I try to login using username:remotemachine\localadmin and the password that I have checked and double checked and I still get an access denied same result if I don't add the domain resolution before the username..... why? ~Preston

Please check if the local admin account is allowed or denied from accessing the computer via network. Access this computer from the network http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc740196(WS.10).aspx Deny access to this computer from the network http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758316(WS.10).aspx Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

it's set to the default and we don't have any GPOs that mess with that except for anything in our server, HR, Accounting and IT OUs, which these are not in.~Preston

Went and and explicity allowed access using what you provided, no change~Preston