Bloody Libraries!

[synaesthesia]

of course not referring to places of reading where a massacre has taken place:

 

I'm fully aware of how many threads there are about this. I've gone through them all. I've applied just about every setting, GPO, adm and registry tweak I can find to get rid of these bloody libraries.

But each time I find new problems.

 

I'm now at the stage where I have removed them succesfully from the navigation pane of Explorer. However I still have the username on the start menu which takes you straight to the personal folders - all of which point to local storage. Wrongness! Home drive is set in the user profile, mapped to the N:\ drive (we're trying for continuity of drive letters from CC3). Documents doesn't appear to recognise that!

 

All stations are W7. Server is 2008 R2.

[jamesfed]

The Libraries only like UNC paths (e.g. \\serverx\students\jbloggs) you shouldn't be mapping them against network drives

[synaesthesia]

That's it though - I don't want to map them or make them point to anything. I want them to go away!

Documents is a folder redirection - basic, redirected to the users home folder. Standard fare, I thought!

Edited March 13, 2012 by synaesthesia

[X-13]

Helpful?

[FN-GM]

Hi,

 

If you PM me your email i have an ADM template that will do the trick.

 

Thanks

[jamin100]

any chance I could get a copy of that too FN-GM?

[FN-GM]

pm your e-mail i will be more than happy. I cant upload attachments at the moment but i would have uploaded it here.

[jamin100]

thanks PM'd

[synaesthesia]

FN-GM you're a legend, many thanks!

[Michael]

 

I'm now at the stage where I have removed them succesfully from the navigation pane of Explorer. However I still have the username on the start menu which takes you straight to the personal folders - all of which point to local storage. Wrongness! Home drive is set in the user profile, mapped to the N:\ drive (we're trying for continuity of drive letters from CC3). Documents doesn't appear to recognise that!

 

All stations are W7. Server is 2008 R2.

 

I believe this is the GPO you're looking for:

 

User Config > Policies > Admin Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar - Remove user folder link from Start Menu - Enabled

[User3204]

I used these tools to redirect the Libraries to somewhere useful

 

Administratively Create and Modify Windows 7 Libraries - The Grim Admin

 

As, I have found it is possible to change the default save location on the 'Documents' Library to p:\documents, not \\server\share\user\documents, but the actual P:\.

 

I did the same Music, Videos and the others.

 

 

If you read the link, to the Grimadmin, then they suggest that you run the applications at logon, but instead, once you have a proper library to the location you want, you can either a) copy this to wherever it's stored on you user profiles, or b) drop it into the .default user folder location. I think I did both, just because I wasn't sure what I was doing at the time.

[gshaw]

I'm stuck on exam cover this evening so have spent the time playing with our Win7 test GPOs to get it looking and feeling as I want... it's been a few months since we first started looking at 7 and these Libraries still look as pointless and irritating now as they did back then!

 

So far we've done the hide trick with the additional GPO (very neat) but it's the Save dialogs that bother me... guess I can try the Grimadmin link but not sure how it will work if I make the replacement location for the "Public" Library a read-only folder? The only Shared area we have isn't one I'd want people saving into... any thoughts?

 

Microsoft how hard is it to release a GPO to remove the Public locations from Libraries?!

Edited March 13, 2012 by gshaw

[FN-GM]

I believe this is the GPO you're looking for:

 

User Config > Policies > Admin Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar - Remove user folder link from Start Menu - Enabled

 

The ADM i use will also remove it from My Computer

[FN-GM]

For those who wanted the adm here it is.

remove Libraries icon.zip