Remove “My Sharing Folders” from My Computer

How to remove the My Sharing Folders icon from My Computer in Windows Vista, XP.

Windows Live Messenger and MSN Messenger add a My Sharing Folders icon to My Computer. I don’t use it, and don’t like the look of it...

Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell Live Messenger not to add this.

If you’re using Windows XP, you can use TweakUI from Microsoft to remove this. If you’re using Vista, you can’t...

  1. Alternatively, you can manually unregister the DLL file that causes this. To do this:

    Update: While this removes the My Sharing Folders icon just fine, it will be re-added by Windows Live Messenger the next time it starts up, making it a fairly useless removal method. Instead, use the second registry-based removal method below.

    • On XP (and probably Windows 2000), open Run from the Start menu, and type regsvr32 -u "%programfiles%\MSN Messenger\fsshext.dll", then hit OK.
    • On Vista, go to Start, type cmd in the find box, right click cmd.exe and select Run as administrator. You may have to say yes to a user access control prompt of some type. In the resulting command prompt window, type regsvr32 –u "%programfiles%\Windows Live\Messenger\fsshext.8.5.1302.1018.dll".
      • Note that the version of fsshext.dll, and hence its filename, is likely to change from version to version of Windows Live Messenger, so if that file doesn’t exist, have a look in the folder and replace that filename with the filename of whichever version of fsshext.dll does exist.

  2. This should remove the My Sharing Folders icon permanently.

    • On XP, go to Start, click Run, and type Regedit. On Vista, type Regedit in the Search bar in the Start menu, and open regedit.exe.
    • Navigate to the following registry key:

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ MyComputer \ NameSpace \ {FC9FB64A-1EB2-4CCF-AF5E-1A497A9B5C2D}

    • Right click on the {FC9FB64A-1EB2-4CCF-AF5E-1A497A9B5C2D} key and select Export. Select a name and location to save the exported key – you will be able to add back My Sharing Folders by merging this exported key back into the registry at a later date (by double clicking it) should you wish to.
    • Right click on the {FC9FB64A-1EB2-4CCF-AF5E-1A497A9B5C2D} key and delete it.
    • Close Regedit and reboot the computer. The My Sharing Folders icon will be gone after the reboot, and, hopefully, should not come back.

More Information

Fore more information on:

 

Updated about 3 yrs, 9 mths ago (April 21, 2008). Know a better answer? Let us know!

Related categories [coloured].

ac-3 acpi album apache artist asio cache caching carputer centos comment [computer] displayport dolby digital dts ebay epg episode exchange exchange 2010 falcon ford gallery golf gossip girl hard answers hash hdmi hosting hotlinking htaccess html hyper-v iis laptop linux [live messenger] mce media center [messenger] mobile mod_rewrite mouse mp3 [msn] [msn messenger] music mysql negative delta time netbook ost owa [pc] php pilot playlist power management redirect regex regular expressions remote control seo server server 2008 server 2008 r2 song soundblaster soundtrack spam spdif sport sql sstp str string surround sound suspend television template text tv unreal tournament ut video [vista] vmc vpn web wi-fi [windows] windows 7 windows mobile wireless xhtml [xp] yahoo messenger

Comment on this article (no HTML, max 1200 characters):