I've been taught that by appending a dollar sign to a share name, Windows would make it invisible to clients. And indeed, on Windows you can't see shares ending in a dollar sign; you have to type the name manually.
Browsing a list of shared folders on my Linux desktop though, I can see all shares just fine - hidden or not hidden. All shares like C$ and ADMIN$ are there together with the visible ones.
I thought Windows' SMB server simply didn't give out those names to anyone by design, how come Linux can view them?
To view the list of shares I did log in, might that have anything to do with it? Some special usergroup that enables you to view all shares?