Remove "Map Network Drive" Menu Item from Windows Vista or XP
If you have never used the "Map Network Drive" dialog box, do you ever wonder how to get rid of it? Personally I only map drives from the command line so I never use it either… so I'm thankful there's a registry hack that can remove the menu items.
If you are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, just right-click on the Computer icon and you'll see:
Here's that same context menu without the items.
Of course, it would probably be simplest to just uninstall, disable or remove file sharing altogether, but if you don't want to do that and still want the menu items gone, this registry hack is for you.
Note: This will completely disable all connect/disconnect menu items, including on currently mapped drives and the Tools menu.
Manual Registry Hack
Open regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key, creating if it does not exist.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
On the right-hand pane create a new 32-bit DWORD value with the following values:
- Name: NoNetConnectDisconnect
- Value: 1
The change should be immediate, you can right-click on Computer to see the difference. To remove, just delete the key or set the value to 0.
Download Registry Hack
Just download, extract, and double-click on RemoveMapNetworkDrive.reg to enter the information into the registry. There's also an uninstall script included to reverse the effect.
This method worked for me! I had to use "NoNetConnectDisconnect" as a DWORD Value on HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer without downloading the registry hack. Normally, I only map network drives at school sometimes but I don't at home because we're not connected to domain.