Manage a Windows Home Edition in a Active Directory environment

• Last updated: Apr 06, 2021

It's pretty rare but we still could find Microsoft Windows Home Edition inside enterprises networks. As we cannot add them to Active Directory and in order to make them able to work, we still can make them access to windows shares.

The commands

• Add network share

net use X: \\192.168.1.251\share user_password /USER:domainame\my_user /PERSISTENT:YES

• Add credentials informations to Windows Vault :

cmdkey /add:192.168.1.251 /user:my_user /pass:domainame\user_password

• Add local user :

net user admin_account AdminPass! /add

• Set password never expires :

WMIC USERACCOUNT WHERE Name='admin_account' SET PasswordExpires=FALSE

• Add local user to administrators local group :

net localgroup administrators admin_account /add

Script it

We can write a .bat file in order to automatize this.

@echo off

set USER=domainame\user01
set PASSWD=MyUser01Password

net use X: \\192.168.1.251\share %PASSWD% /USER:%USER% /PERSISTENT:YES
net use Y: \\192.168.1.251\scans %PASSWD% /USER:%USER% /PERSISTENT:YES

cmdkey /add:192.168.1.251 /user:%USER% /pass:%PASSWD%

net user admin_account AdminPass! /add
net localgroup administrators admin_account /add

Note

Password escape characters

If you want to use special characters for your users passwords you have to know that you may need escape characters.

Character	Escape Sequence
>	^>
&	^&
"	\"
<	^<
|	^|
^	^^

Example

• Add user admin with >&"|assword password

net user admin ^>^&\"^|asword /add