Remove or Disable Shared Documents from My Computer

How To Remove or Disable Shared Documents from My Computer

You can’t delete the Shared Documents from My Computer. Try

right clicking on Shared Documents folder and you can’t find

the delete menu. Pressing the Delete key on your keyboard will

do nothing as well.

The actual Shared Documents folder is actually located at

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents. Try

deleting, renaming or moving the folder and you’ll get the

error message “Documents is a Windows system folder and is

required for Windows to run properly. It cannot be moved or

renamed.”
Delete Shared Documents from Windows

To remove or disable Shared Documents from My Computer in

Windows XP Professional:
1. Go the the Start menu, and click on Run
2. Type gpedit.msc
3. Now go to User Configuration -> Administrative Templates ->

Windows Components and click on Windows Explorer.
4. In here, you’ll see the option Remove Shared Documents from

My Computer. Double click on that, select Enabled, and click

OK.
gpedit.msc remove shared documents

For Windows XP Home, you need to manually edit your registry

because it doesn’t come with Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc).

This method can also work on Windows XP Professional.
1. Go the the Start menu, and click on Run
2. Type regedit
3. Navigate

to:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\

Policies\Explorer


4. Right-click in the white area in the right pane, select New

and pick “DWORD Value”
5. Name it NoSharedDocuments
6. Give it a value of 1
7. Reboot (or log off and log back in)

There is also ANOTHER registry key which you can delete and the

Shared Documents will be removed from My Computer. Take note

that after deleting this key, re-enabling Shared Documents from

gpedit.msc won’t work. So make sure you backup this registry

key using the “Export” command.
1. Go the the Start menu, and click on Run
2. Type regedit
3. Navigate

to:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\DelegateFolders


4. Locate and delete the key: {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-

5595fe6b30ee}
5. Reboot

No more Shared Documents folder in My Computer!