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 "Libraries" 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\{031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}\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 b090010d
5. That's it. Log off or restart your system and "Libraries" will no longer present in Explorer window.
NOTE: If you want to restore "Libraries" in Navigation pane, simply change value of "Attributes" DWORD to b080010d using step 4.
PS: If you want to completely disable "Libraries" feature, you can visit following tutorial:
How to Disable “Libraries” Feature in Windows 7?
This article was posted by VG in following section: Windows 7.
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our RSS feed or free newsletter to get all new articles directly in your Inbox. Also check out our popular articles and archive to read other interesting articles.
Ly Thomsen (aka BadBlue)
For those that want a quick way to do this: my hubby's batch file method (this is the section relating to removing 'libraries') note the value has to be in decimal. you'll have to get setacl from the author's website if you don't already have it
Set NP="HKCR\CLSID\{031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}\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 2962227469 /t REG_DWORD /f
Alexandre
Many thanks!
Just as a comment: I don't use Libraries because if I have to organize my files under folders, them I don't nees Libraries, because may files are already organized. Maybe I'm missing something here, but for a desktop user Libraries are pretty much useless.
eladkse
I am finding that this particular reg change crashes the open dialog on some applications. For example, the move function for the Shell User Folders. Any way to fix this?