Yesterday, one of my colleagues came to me with a problem to solve. He wanted a user to be able to create a share remotely (i.e. without logging onto the server console physically or via terminal services). I suggested allowing the user access to a shared folder at a higher level in the directory structure and then, after they had connected to that share, they could create a new subfolder and share it out. Unfortunately, my colleague returned later to say that Windows doesn’t allow sharing of folders when connected via a share so he had to find another way around the issue – he found two possible answers:

• A Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit utility called rmtshare.exe.
• A shareware application called netshareadd (but when I visit the site all sorts of popups are produced so I’m not able to recommend it to anyone at the moment).

Even though rmtshare.exe dates back to the days of Windows NT 4.0, I was able to use it to create a share (and delete it again) on a Windows Server 2003 server from a Windows Vista client (although I did have to elevate my permissions before it ran successfully).