All we know that Windows offer features for sharing folders and drivers. But this is to risky, especially the administrative shared in professional, corporate and server versions of Widnows. This shares provide access for administration of the system, but can be used for unauthorized access or from viruses and trojan horses.

Most of the administrative shares can be stopped without general turn off of sharing, but IPC$ shares can't be stopped without turning off entire sharing protocol. This will make unavailable sharing services for your entire LAN, but our target is exactly this - for one or any other reason we want to stop the service.

So, to stop the sharing go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Network Connection > Your_Network_connection_name > Properties.

Uncheck the File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks.

This will forbid any sharing, including Administrative shares, but without IPC$ shares. Next go to Control Panel > Administrative tools > Services or just type services.msc in Start > Run and Services Manager will appear. Find service named Server and from properties select Disabled for Startup Type.

This action generally will stop Windows sharing abilities including File and Print sharing. IPC$ shares will be stopped too.

It is important to know, when you stop Server service this will stop Computer Browser service also. But you don't have to wary about this, because this service have no relation with any browsers and your Internet connection will not be interrupted.

Also you can find many Windows related tutorials in our Windows tutorials section or you can read Internet & Network security of Windows XP / 2003 article for more information about Windows Networking Security