How to Always Show “User Home Folder”, “Control Panel” and “Recycle Bin” Items in Windows 7 Explorer Navigation Pane?
Windows 7 comes with an advanced and re-designed Windows Explorer. Although it is easy to use but its not very customizable.
You can’t customize command bar, you can’t remove items from navigation pane. Although these things are possible by using registry tricks and 3rd party apps which we have mentioned in past.
One similar issue is that “User Home” folder, “Control Panel” and “Recycle Bin” items are only visible in navigation pane when you select “Show all folders” option. These items are not shown in normal view.
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Today in this tutorial, we’ll tell you how to show these 3 items always in navigation pane as shown in following screenshot:
1. Type regedit in RUN or Start menu search box and press Enter. it’ll open Registry Editor.
2. Now go to following keys one by one:
To add Control Panel:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{26EE0668-A00A-44D7-9371-BEB064C98683}\ShellFolder
To add User Home Folder:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}\ShellFolder
To add Recycle Bin:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\ShellFolder
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3. Now you’ll need to create a new String value PinToNameSpaceTree in right-side pane but Windows will not allow you to create it as you won’t have proper permissions. So take ownership of ShellFolder key with the help of this guide.
4. Now create a new String value “PinToNameSpaceTree” in right-side pane. Leave its value as blank.
5. That’s it. Log off or restart your system and you’ll get the desired item visible in Windows Explorer’s navigation pane.
is there a way to remove the recycle bin from the windows explorer when “show all folders” is selected?
^^ Never tried to do it. I’ll try to find a way. 😉
Wow… They removed this function too in “WIndows 8”.
You don’t need to completely log off: You just need to restart Explorer (kill any “explorer.exe” processes in Task Manager & create new task “explorer.exe”)
If you have enabled the “Launch folder windows in a separate process” option in “Folder options”, you just need to close all folder windows.
Is it possible to add a dvd drive into the navigation pane?
^^ We already have it under My Computer/This PC?
To askvg.com,
you may want to put in an update that the same CLSID:s/GUID:s are valid for Windows 10 as well.
(And I would guess for Windows 8 and 8.1 …?)
BTW, thanks for a splendid web site!
Cheers! /Henke