Symptom

When you open Windows Explorer, you'll see the My Network Places icon in the folder pane. Some Windows XP users (standalone XP systems) would like to remove this icon from Windows Explorer view. But, when you delete the icon and open a fresh instance of Windows Explorer, the icon will be re-created



To hide My Network Places from Explorer

> Open Registry Editor and navigate to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ CLSID \ {208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
\ ShellFolder

> Backup the key by exporting it to a REG file.

> In the right-pane, create a new REG_DWORD value named Attributes

> Double-click Attributes and assign it's data 20180000

To undo the changes, delete the Attributes value