How do I turn Password Protected Sharing on or off programmatically?

Question

Windows Vista and 7 has this switch in Network and Sharing Center. It\'s on by default, and that prevents unauthenticated access to shares even if they\'re shared with Every

Answer 1

Here is a powershell script that implements paolos answer. It is unpolished as it permits everybody write access to the specific registry key (The [7] part specifies this with regini syntax) and uses a file in C:\ root but works flawless:

# Get guest user id
$SID = & "wmic" "useraccount" "where" "name='guest'" "get" "sid" "/Value" | Out-String
$SID = $SID.Trim().Substring(4)

# Generate regini script
$PATH = "\Registry\Machine\Security\Policy\Accounts\" + $SID + "\ActSysAc"
$PATH + " [7]`r`n" + $PATH + "`r`n@ = REG_NONE 4 0x41 0x00 0x00 0x00" >> "C:\firstrun.regini"

# Execute regini script
& "regini" "C:\firstrun.regini"