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.

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Updated about 20 days, 11 hrs ago (April 22, 2008). Know a better answer? Let us know!

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