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HIDE or Restrict access to mapped drives

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7 replies

by asiedentopf 1 view

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If you open "My Computer" as you know you can see all local and as well as mapped network drives.

I have a situation where I need a program to access a mapped drive but I don't want the users to see it or access it.

This mapped drive is to ashare on an AS/400 for use by Client Access Express and a program called RVI. The share has A LOT of images.

Thanks,
Andre'

7 replies

by frobo

Hi,
U can use this Registry hack to hide your Drive:
Registry path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
\Microsoft
\Windows
\CurrentVersion
Policies
\Explorer
NoDrives REG_DWORD 32-bit word

Default: 0

Hides local and network drives selectively. When you hide a drive, the icon representing the drive does not appear in My Computer, Windows?NT Explorer, or Network Neighborhood, and the drive letter does not appear as a choice in the Open dialog box of applications. This can protect certain drives, including the floppy disk drive, from misuse and it can direct users to save their work to certain drives.
The lower 26 bits in this value correspond to the 26 letters used to identify drives on the local computer and its network. The rightmost bit represents drive A; the 26th bit from the right represents drive Z. To hide a drive, set the bit that corresponds to its drive letter to 1. To display a drive, set the bit that corresponds to its drive letter to 0. To hide all 26 drives, set the value to 67108863 (decimal) or 0x3FFFFFF (hexadecimal).

Warning

This value does not prevent users from using other programs, such as File Manager (Winfile.exe) to access local and network drives. Drives that you hide by using this value entry still appear in and are accessible from File Manager.

by frobo

To simplyfie the registryhack use NT Policies. Here is an Sample:
CLASS USER
CATEGORY !!HideDrives
Policy !!DRIVES
KEYNAME "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer"
PART !!Chose DROPDOWNLIST
VALUENAME "NoDrives"
ITEMLIST
NAME !!Floppy VALUE NUMERIC 1
NAME !!cdrom VALUE NUMERIC 32
NAME !!Floppy+CD VALUE NUMERIC 33
NAME !!all VALUE NUMERIC 6708863
NAME !!nothing VALUE NUMERIC 0
END ITEMLIST
END PART
END POLICY
END CATEGORY ; Hidedrives

[strings]
Floppy="hide floppy"
CDROM="hide CDROM"
Floppy+CD="hide FD + CD"
All="hide all drives"
nothing="nothing to hide"
Hidedrives="Special Policie to hide Drives"
DRIVES="Drives"
Chose="chose the drivelist"

by frobo

Edit this file and save it with the ending .ADM. Start the Policyeditor and chose new category and load this adm file.
Create a Group in Usermanager for Domain and aplly this Pol to it.

Frobo

by jaredj

I have one suggestion.
On window 95/98/NT4
Use tweak and go to the drives section and hide the drive. Go to the registery
HKEY_Local_machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer","NoDrives"
the value here is what you need to put in the other machine. This value here hides O: "00400000". If you manually put this value in you will not have to install Twaek on all the computers.

On W2K machines put it in the HKCU instead of HKLM

Jared Perzynski
System Administrator

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