How to Remove “Homegroup” from Windows 7 Explorer’s Navigation Pane?

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If you enable "Navigation Pane" in Windows 7 Explorer, it shows following 5 items in the pane:

Favorites
Libraries
Homegroup
Computer
Network

This tutorial will help you in removing "Homegroup" item from the Navigation pane as shown in following screenshot:

Simply follow these simple steps:

1. Type regedit in RUN or startmenu search box and press Enter. It'll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}\ShellFolder

3. Now you'll need to change value of "Attributes" DWORD value present in the right-side section. But Windows will not allow you to change its value as you won't have proper permissions.

To get permissions, first right-click on "ShellFolder" key and select "Permissions".

It'll open a new window. Select "Administrators" in user list and check "Allow" box given for "Full Control" permission.

Click on OK button to apply the changes.

4. Now double-click on "Attributes" DWORD value given in right-side section and change its value to b094010c

5. That's it. Log off or restart your system and "Homegroup" will no longer present in Explorer window.

NOTE: If you want to restore "Homegroup" in Navigation pane, simply change value of "Attributes" DWORD to b084010c using step 4.

PS: If you want to completely disable "Homegroup" feature, you can visit following tutorial:

How to Disable “HomeGroup” Feature in Windows 7?

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This article was posted by VG in following section: Windows 7.

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TheAslan

Hiya!!

Thanx for this! It worked 100%! But is there any way to create a reg file which i can click to add the keys in registry, it's just more simple in that way..can you give me some direction of how to create a reg file which removes this Homegroup thing..

Thanx mate so much for help!!!
VG

^^ Since you need to take the permission on the key first, you can't use a Registry script directly.
Rich

Hey Vishal would it be possible to make a command script to modify keys like this that would automatically give it correct permissions if run as admin?
brands

I don't have a CLSID file.. only a CLS
VG

^^ Its not possible in any case. Please check again in Registry. Without CLSID key, Windows can't exist.
Fredrik Andersson

I tried this long with the disable the hole 'Home Group' function but this didn't work aswell. I took ownership of the folder in question (inside regedit). I copied you value for the 'attributes' and rebooted but the icon is still there and your value is still there but it doesn't do much.
Annie Bee

Windows 7
And I thought I was the only person in the world to find "Libraries", "Homegroup", etc., an annoying feature of Windows 7.
Ly Thomsen (aka BadBlue)

Rich if you want do this from the commandline, you can do what my husband does and employ setacl to do so. this is just a snippet for hiding homegroup as an example, libraries, favourites can be hidden this way etc (this is a small section from his heavy duty batch file) note the value needs to be in decimal not hex for setacl

Set NP="HKCR\CLSID\{B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}\ShellFolder"
"SetACL.exe" -on %NP% -ot reg -actn setowner -ownr "n:S-1-5-32-544;s:y"
"SetACL.exe" -on %NP% -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:Administrators;p:full"
"SetACL.exe" -on %NP% -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:Users;p:full"
REG ADD %NP% /v Attributes /d 2962489612 /t REG_DWORD /f
Ly Thomsen (aka BadBlue)

Grr, sorry. It should read above that the value needs to be in decimal for the reg add command
Ly Thomsen (aka BadBlue)

GRRRRR.

Now I've actually asked him he says it's an old version I copied the code from
hex does work for reg add but you need to add 0x to the beginning *Shrugs* either way the decimal value works anyways but since hex is used in the manual step-by-step tutorial prob'ly left confusing for folks to use that. so the code for that is...

Set NP="HKCR\CLSID\{B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}\ShellFolder"
"SetACL.exe" -on %NP% -ot reg -actn setowner -ownr "n:S-1-5-32-544;s:y"
"SetACL.exe" -on %NP% -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:Administrators;p:full"
"SetACL.exe" -on %NP% -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:Users;p:full"
REG ADD %NP% /v Attributes /d 0xb094010c /t REG_DWORD /f