Is there a way of stopping XP to "kindly" be adding all the shared folder on the LAN under "My network places"
e.g
Files on Craig
Files on Tim
Games on Kip
Music on Kip
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not only does it slow the process down but I dont want all the available shares to be listed there, i use that for FTP access!

Cheers

No I dont believe you can stop this, but I dont think I quite understand your question. Do you not want the shared folders to be under "My Network Places"?

not particularly as I can access the individuals shares by looking at their computer, we have a network of approx 10 machines all with many shares so i was just wondering if there was a way of telling XP not to list all the available shares

If you access each work station one by one through the "My Network", inorder see shared folders in that specific workstation. Is thtat what you want?

no i know how to do that, its just in My Network places i dont want it to list all the available shares on all the available machines! I just want it to show my FTP folders!

I think he doesn't want this:

See how it shows the folders I've been to? That is what I believe he wants gone, leaving only ftp.

you can delete shortcuts to shares you have accessed which are in network places by highlighting and deleting.

Registry has some keys that may affect it, like
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ NetworkCrawler \ Objects \ WorkgroupCrawler