How to Disable “HomeGroup” Feature in Windows 7?



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/Windows%207/Windows7logo.png

Recently an AskVG reader asked how can he remove "Homegroup" icon from My Computer window in Windows 7?

"Homegroup" is a new feature in Windows 7 which allows to share files and printers on a home network quickly and easily. You can get more info about Homegroup at this link.

The Homegroup can be accessed using Windows Explorer. Its displayed in Navigation pane as shown below:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/Homegroup_Icon_in_My_Computer.png

Now the important thing is that not all people are going to use this new feature. If you have a single PC and don't want to use this feature, why not disable it and save some system resources? Yes, Homegroup runs 2 services in background and you can stop those services to free some valuable system resources.

So today in this tutorial, we are going to tell you how to disable "Homegroup" feature in Windows 7? So without wasting any time, lets start the tutorial:

1. Open Computer and right-click on "Homegroup" icon present in Navigation pane and select "Change HomeGroup Settings":

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/Homegroup_Context_Menu.png

2. Now click on "Leave the homegroup..." link given at bottom.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/Change_Homegroup_Settings.png

3. It'll ask for confirmation, click on "Leave the homegroup" button.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/Leave_Homegroup.png

4. After that, close Explorer window. Now type services.msc in RUN or Startmenu Searchbox and press Enter. It'll open "Services" window.

Here look for following 2 services:

  • HomeGroup Listener
  • HomeGroup Provider

Once you find them, double-click on each and change the "Startup type" to Disabled. Apply the changes and exit from Services window.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/Disable_Homegroup_Listener_Provider.png

5. That's it. It'll permanently disable "HomeGroup" feature and its icon will also be removed from Windows Explorer:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/Homegroup_Removed_from_My_Computer.png



This article was posted in Troubleshooting, Windows 7.

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8 Comments

  • hi
    i am having a problem with rename my disk drives.all the drives are named as local disk and i cannot rename them.please help me with this

  • vg this is off topic and i need help

    how cud i resolved an error causing by system dlls

    recently in my xp i changed almost all icons of dlls and cpls in system32 folder.

    and VLC can't run displaying an error msg:

    http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc257/magnumheart/VLCError.png

    thx for the help. i used resource hacker to change dlls and cpls.

    how can i resolve this. and also easeus partiton master doesnt display

    the drive partitions it just displays the app window

    but no contents. but with menubar and tasks at the left ^^.

  • Wonderful. Have looked for this since beta.

    No just a same tutorial to remove libraries is needed because I don't need them and they waste space in the left pane of the explorer.

  • hi VG. this problem is off topic but i didn't know anywhere else to post it.

    Since i started using win 7 RC i have been having a slight problem. the taskbar buttons of all open applications dont always show.

    see here:
    http://i577.photobucket.com/albums/ss218/shariq00/Capture1.png

    google chrome was running but there was no icon to click on... the "alt+tab" feature works, but it starts getting annoying when u can't use your mouse to switch to that window. any help is much appreciated.

  • VG

    ^^ Most probably a bug in RC.

    @MAGNUMHEART
    It seems your Shell32.dll file size is very large. Try to remove unnecessary BITMAPs, AVIs from the file.

    @Daniel
    I'm going to post the tutorial very soon. So stay tuned.

    @karthik
    Did you try to set the label using drive properties?

  • vg do u mean "shell32.dll" is the only problem

    and modifying other dlls and cpls doesnt have to do with it? ^^

    thx. can i just revert the normal dll for "shell32.dll" can u provide a link.

  • yup i have even tried disk management.but in vain

  • Hi VG , can you please tell me how to remove network icon from explorer

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