nodrives registry key is removed

  • Thread starter Thread starter manual updates
  • Start date Start date
M

manual updates

Here is a second look at this problem. The registry key for Nodrives
has been deleted from several of our machines. I suspect application
problems or operating system problems, rather than user problems:

(1) Our users are not using regedit to remove the registry key.
(2) Nodrives was the last change to the registry
(3) Our users often use external 1394 and flash disks
(4) Hotfixes are not an issue
(5) No obvious application problems

(1) No one from the power users group or administrators group can
execute regedit on our computers without some work. The application
security properties have been denied. These properties must be
returned to "allow" even for administrators to execute regedit. The
Nodrives policy is disappearing from the registry on systems where
regedit.exe remains denied. It is highly unlikely that "nodrives" is
disappearing because regedit was executed.

(2) On healthy, unaltered, computers the following points are true:
Our administrative partition is not visable in Windows Explorer as
desired. Search locations are limited, completely undesired. If
Regedit is allowed to execute, it immediately displays Nodrives as the
last policy view; it was the most recent edit. Since nodrives was the
most recent policy edit, should I be looking at System Restore on the
"broken" machines? We have not done a system restore manually.

(3) Users are frequently adding external disks and many users ignore
steps for safe removal. Are security policies corrupted by unsafe
removal? How could a registry key be deleted?

(4) It doesn't matter if security hotfixes are installed. I have seen
various computers in various stages of update, some with the registry
key and some without. There's no corrolation between hotfixes and the
deleted registry key.

(5) Iomega Active Disk and Data Viz Mac Opener are installed. These
applications allow disks to be read, but do not deal with security
policies.
 
Good Service Pack 2 fixes the "Look in" drop down menu.

Bad The Nodrives registry key still seems to disapear.

With the addition of Windows XP Service Pack 2 there is no longer a
limit to the "Search for Files and Folders" "Look in" drop down menu
when the nodrives registry key is added. Instead of hidding all
drives only the restricted drive is hidden. This is a welcome
improvement.

Unfortunately, the nodrives registry key still disappears for us. We
looked at nine computers and all were missing the Nodrives entry after
being deployed for one week. We're looking for any info to clear this
up.

Background - Here is the location of Nodrives:
MyComputer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
DWORD NoDrives (in this case the value is 16 for hex or 10 for decimal
resulting in a hidden E: drive)
 

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