Disable Network in Explorer

[cpjitservices]

Hi all

 

This may seem like a simple thing, but for the life of me, I cant get find any way to disable the Network icon in explorer.

 

Anyone got a definitive how to?

 

Found some info on 2012 but it's either not there in 2016 or it doesn't work.

 

 

Ta.

[jezi55]

I did some research as I'm looking to do this next week, I think the best way will be to make a gpo to edit the registry.

 

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4854-add-remove-network-navigation-pane-windows-10-a.html

 

The only bit I am struggling with is setting the ownership on the permission to change. Think there's a gpo template floating about but have not tried this yet, hopefully someone will have a simple solution.

[Ageekin10]

Hi,

 

I'm not sure if you have tried this method, I found that i needed to create the "Shellfolder" key and then add the Reg_DWord with the name of "Attributes" with a value of 00100000. This works per a user so you have more control. I tried it on a windows 10 machine and once i restarted explorer the network icon had gone. No special permissions are needed by the user so i think a GPP that applied to the user would work with a registry setting.

 

https://serverfault.com/a/676817

 

just in case the thread is removed or changed in the furtue , I have copied the text from the page that was given

 

 

For this particular problem, if you want to disable the "Network" icon on the left side of the File Explorer navigation pane on a per user basis instead of system wide because it is nice to have as an administrator, you can create this registry key instead and implement it as a group policy preference.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C}\ShellFolder

As mentioned above, you need to create a DWORD entry called "Attributes" and give it a value of "00100000" hexadecimal. After much research trying to get rid of other icons on the Ribbon UI, I found that the above value of "b0940064" technically does work but all you are really doing is turning on the SFGAO_NONENUMERATED bit in the hex, so the rest of data means nothing.

[computer_expert]

The only bit I am struggling with is setting the ownership on the permission to change. Think there's a gpo template floating about but have not tried this yet, hopefully someone will have a simple solution.

 

You can set registry key permissions in GP by looking under 'Computer Config/Windows settings/security settings/registry'

[cpjitservices]

Thanks all