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.

Download RemoveMapNetworkDrive Registry Hack

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Lowell is the founder and CEO of How-To Geek. He’s been running the show since creating the site back in 2006. Over the last decade, Lowell has personally written more than 1000 articles which have been viewed by over 250 million people. Prior to starting How-To Geek, Lowell spent 15 years working in IT doing consulting, cybersecurity, database management, and programming work.
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