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Hide removable drives from the Send To menu in Windows XP

Published: April 16, 2005
Modified  : Mar 31,  2007
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Introduction

When you right-click a file and choose the Send To context menu, the drop-down contains the list of removable/optical drives installed in the system. To hide specific drive-letters from the Send To menu, use the NoDrives registry value. This is equivalent to the Hide these specified drives in My Computer Group Policy. See here for more information on this setting.

NOTE: This article is applicable to Windows XP systems. For Windows Vista, see article How to hide drive-letters from the Send To menu in Windows Vista

Important: The NoDrives Policy hides the specified drives from My Computer, Windows Explorer, and in the SendTo menu. However, access to the specified drives is not restricted by this setting. The user can get access to a hidden drive by typing the drive-letter in Start-Run dialog or Command Prompt, or using third-party file management tools.

Tweak UI Power Toy for Windows XP helps you accomplish this easily.

Download Tweak UI, install and run Tweak UI

Click the (+) sign near the My Computer section

Select Drives

Uncheck the drive-letters that you want to hide

Click Apply, OK

The drive-letters are now hidden in the Send To menu, My Computer, and in Windows Explorer.

Modified registry value

When you uncheck the drives using TweakUI, NoDrives registry value is modified accordingly. To apply the setting to multiple systems, you can export this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer

Value name: NoDrives

For example, when the A:\ drive is hidden, NoDrives is assigned a value of 01 00 00 00 (REG_BINARY)

Note: There is a tip circulating on the net, regarding the registry value NoDrivesInSendToMenu. NoDrivesInSendToMenu does not work in Windows XP, but works fine in Windows Vista systems.