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  • #2276362

    Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

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    by Anonymous ·

    My question is about auto completion of available shares while typing in a path in the “Run” box. I have unchecked the “Automatically Search for Network Folders and Printers” in Explorer | Tools | Folder options, but this does not disable displaying of shares when a valid server name is entered in the Start | Run box. For instance, when I type “\\\” a list of available shares is displayed in a drop down. Can this be disabled??

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    • #3312283

      Reply To: Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

      by bfilmfan ·

      In reply to Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

      You can easily set that with the Administrative templates in XP.

      To remove the Start Run Box, the section is:
      Local Computer Policy/User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Start Menu and TaskBar/Remove Run Menu from Start Menu, which I am sure you will want to set to ENABLED.

      Depending on your desktop enviornment, you may also want to peruse your choices In Desktop, Shared Folders and Network also.

      In the even that you have an Active Directory server, you can set these via a GPO from the server. I do not recommend that you set them in the Default Domain Policy, but create a policy that will be applied at the OU level. Then you can test it on some users and make sure that it does what you want, but still allows them to work.

    • #3312274

      Reply To: Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

      by Anonymous ·

      In reply to Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

      I was trying to get around disabling the Run command, but I can’t find any reg-hacks or other way around it.
      -Thanks

    • #3312272

      Reply To: Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

      by bfilmfan ·

      In reply to Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

      You can easily set that with the Administrative templates in XP.

      To remove the Start Run Box, the section is:
      Local Computer Policy/User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Start Menu and TaskBar/Remove Run Menu from Start Menu, which I am sure you will want to set to ENABLED.

      Depending on your desktop enviornment, you may also want to peruse your choices In Desktop, Shared Folders and Network also.

      In the even that you have an Active Directory server, you can set these via a GPO from the server. I do not recommend that you set them in the Default Domain Policy, but create a policy that will be applied at the OU level. Then you can test it on some users and make sure that it does what you want, but still allows them to work.

    • #3313575

      Reply To: Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

      by rewrite ·

      In reply to Disable Auto Discovery of Network Shares

      Typing in the run dialog box does not invoke a search of any kind. What it will do is display a list of the most recently used commands (mru) that have been typed in.

      It sounds like you want to clear the mru history of the Run dialog. You can do this with TweakUI. Install it and go to the Paranoia tab. Check the item “Clear run history at logon”. You can also clear many more mru lists on this tab.

      Other than doing that the registry key holding these values can be removed (but they will be regenerated and start all over when you type in a new command). The location of the key is:

      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU

      These values can be manually removed or there are commercial and freeware apps that can clear the entries.

      I don’t know if you can set up a policy to do this (I have never heard of one).

      Cheers.

      RW

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