Removing 'My PC' folders in Windows 8.1

19 October 2013

I normally don't care about what happens in Windows Explorer, because I'm not using it. But after upgrading to Windows 8.1 I notices 6 additional folders in the Computer's view in xplorer2. This is where I want my drives, not links to Music or Videos!

I couldn't find anything in the GUI to turn this off, so I wrote a short PowerShell script to remove them:

function RemoveOneKey([string]$guid,[string]$name,[string]$Wow6432Node)
{
     $fullKey = "hklm:\SOFTWARE\" + $Wow6432Node + "Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\{" + $guid + "}" 
     if (Test-Path "$fullKey")
     {
        Remove-Item -Path "$fullKey" 
        Write-Host "$name folder removed"
     }
     else
     {
        Write-Host "$name folder not found"
     }
}

function RemoveOneFolder([string]$guid,[string]$name)
{
    # call once for native, once for 32bit nodes
    RemoveOneKey $guid $name ""
    RemoveOneKey $guid $name "Wow6432Node\"
}

RemoveOneFolder "1CF1260C-4DD0-4ebb-811F-33C572699FDE" "Music"
RemoveOneFolder "374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B" "Downloads"
RemoveOneFolder "3ADD1653-EB32-4cb0-BBD7-DFA0ABB5ACCA" "Pictures"
RemoveOneFolder "A0953C92-50DC-43bf-BE83-3742FED03C9C" "Videos"
RemoveOneFolder "A8CDFF1C-4878-43be-B5FD-F8091C1C60D0" "Documents"
RemoveOneFolder "B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641" "Desktop

Copy this into a file like 'RemoveMyPCFolders.ps1' and execute in from an elevated PowerShell.

After this you have to log off and on again to get rid of the folders.

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