Hide removable drives from the Send To menu in Windows XP
Published: April 16, 2005Modified : 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.
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.