When you plug in an external drive to a Windows 10 machine, it appears as a separate entry in the navigation pane in Windows Explorer. But it also appears as an entry in the nested item under “This PC,” as seen next to Deadpool here.
If this sort of thing drives you up the wall—like if you keep the My PC menu open all the time, and just want your navigation pane to be more tidy—there’s a way to curb this behavior with a little tweak in the Registry Editor. Here’s how you do it.
Standard warning: Registry Editor is a powerful tool and misusing it can render your system unstable or even inoperable. This is a pretty simple hack and as long as you stick to the instructions, you shouldn’t have any problems. That said, if you’ve never worked with it before, consider reading about how to use the Registry Editor before you get started. And definitely back up the Registry (and your computer!) before making changes.
RELATED: Learning to Use the Registry Editor Like a Pro
To get started, press Windows+R on your keyboard. In the “open” field, type “regedit” (for the Windows registry editor) then click “OK.”
To get started, press Windows+R on your keyboard. In the “open” field, type “regedit” (for the Windows registry editor) then click “OK.”
Navigate to this location using the location bar:
The {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} key folder should be highlighted at the bottom of the Registry Editor window. Right-click the folder name, then click “Delete.”
The duplicate drive icon should immediately disappear from Windows’ File Explorer.
There’s one more step, but it’s optional. If you’re using a 64-bit PC (and most of the ones sold in the last several years are), you’ll also need to delete another key to hide the duplicate drives in “Browse” and “Open” windows, like the ones that appear when you’re uploading photos to a website. To cover that, go to another key, using the same process as above.
Delete the key to remove the entry. You’re done! Now you can get back to your neater, tidier Windows Explorer.
