Removing Drive Letters From The Send To Menu - A Solution

[John C. Frickson]

I recently bought a new computer that has a four-slot card reader built
in. This added four additional entries to the "Send To" menu. Now I use
Send To quite a lot, but like to keep it trimmed down to just the
essentials.

I did some research and found out that the consensus is that it's not
possible to remove these drive letters from the Send To menu. Well, I
came up with a partial solution:

1. Open My Computer
2. Select the drives you want removed from the "Send To" menu
3. Right click and select "Create shortcut"
4. You'll get a warning saying the shortcuts will go on the desktop
5. Use TweakUI or the registry hack to hide the drives
6. Move or copy the shortcuts to a place where they're easy to find

I put the shortcuts in two places. The first is in the root of my E:
drive, where I keep all my photos. For the second place, I created a
"Flash Drives" folder in my Start menu and copied them there.

It's not quite as convenient as leaving the drives visible to Windows
Explorer, but it's not bad. Clicking on the short cut will open an
Explorer window, and all the usual "Format", "Eject", etc. menu items
are still available on the shortcut.

John

 

[John C. Frickson]

I recently bought a new computer that has a four-slot card reader built
in. This added four additional entries to the "Send To" menu. Now I use
Send To quite a lot, but like to keep it trimmed down to just the
essentials.

I did some research and found out that the consensus is that it's not
possible to remove these drive letters from the Send To menu. Well, I
came up with a partial solution:

1. Open My Computer
2. Select the drives you want removed from the "Send To" menu
3. Right click and select "Create shortcut"
4. You'll get a warning saying the shortcuts will go on the desktop
5. Use TweakUI or the registry hack to hide the drives
6. Move or copy the shortcuts to a place where they're easy to find

I put the shortcuts in two places. The first is in the root of my E:
drive, where I keep all my photos. For the second place, I created a
"Flash Drives" folder in my Start menu and copied them there.

It's not quite as convenient as leaving the drives visible to Windows
Explorer, but it's not bad. Clicking on the short cut will open an
Explorer window, and all the usual "Format", "Eject", etc. menu items
are still available on the shortcut.

John

Oops, forgot to include some info.

TweakUI Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Registry hack to hide drives:
A little complicated. Do a web or usenet search for
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
NoDrives"

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Hide removable drives from the Send To menu in Windows XP:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/nodrives.htm

How to hide drive-letters from the Send To menu in Windows Vista:
http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/181/1/

--
Regards,

Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows Shell/User]
Windows® Troubleshooting http://www.winhelponline.com


"John C. Frickson" <frickson_AT_gibbon.com> wrote in message I recently bought a new computer that has a four-slot card reader built
in. This added four additional entries to the "Send To" menu. Now I use
Send To quite a lot, but like to keep it trimmed down to just the
essentials.

I did some research and found out that the consensus is that it's not
possible to remove these drive letters from the Send To menu. Well, I
came up with a partial solution:

1. Open My Computer
2. Select the drives you want removed from the "Send To" menu
3. Right click and select "Create shortcut"
4. You'll get a warning saying the shortcuts will go on the desktop
5. Use TweakUI or the registry hack to hide the drives
6. Move or copy the shortcuts to a place where they're easy to find

I put the shortcuts in two places. The first is in the root of my E:
drive, where I keep all my photos. For the second place, I created a
"Flash Drives" folder in my Start menu and copied them there.

It's not quite as convenient as leaving the drives visible to Windows
Explorer, but it's not bad. Clicking on the short cut will open an
Explorer window, and all the usual "Format", "Eject", etc. menu items
are still available on the shortcut.

John