In Windows Vista, file sharing via public folders is quite convenient, especially when sharing between multiple users using the same PC: Anything stored in a public folder The resources, including documents, downloads, music, pictures, videos, etc., can be used by other users on the colleague's PC and network users with access to the public folder. At the same time, the user accesses the content located in the public folder. Convenient, just open the Explorer, etc., you can find a shortcut to the public folder directly in the "Favorite Links".
But as we said in the Windows Vista tutorial, the sharing method of public folder implementation is quite "simplistic", it can not set different levels of access permissions for different users, can not restrict users can only share public files Specific files in the folder, and so on, therefore, for security reasons, we often recommend not to go through the public folder, but to make more detailed settings in the file save location for more secure access.
However, public folders cannot be virtually disabled or deleted in Windows Vista, ie the "C:\\Users\\Public\\" directory cannot be deleted. Otherwise, it may affect the normal operation of Windows Vista. Therefore, even if you don't want to share through a public folder, you can only do not copy any content into the directory, making it an "empty directory" in a sense, at least so that others cannot pass the public file. The folder sees your private file.
In this way, the public folder link in the resource manager has no meaning to keep it, we can consider hiding or deleting it, which not only makes the resource manager interface more concise, but also avoids "misoperation". .
Delete the "Public" item in the Favorites link
The Favorites link in the left panel of Explorer is saved in the "%userprofile%\\Links\\" directory. To delete the "public" item, we can
in the Explorer, browse to the "Links" folder under the user directory, find the "public" shortcut in it, delete it;
Enter directly in the command line window: del %userprofile%\\Links\\Public.lnk
Note that even under Chinese Windows Vista, the shortcut for the "public" item is "Public.lnk" Instead of "public .lnk". Don't be confused by the Chinese character "public" displayed in the graphical interface.
Hide the "Public" list in Explorer
The approach described above has a lot of limitations. The most important thing is that it is only valid for the current user, if there is more on the same computer. Users, then there will still be a "public" link in the Explorer when you log in to the system with a different user account, unless you do something similar for all users.
If you want to "see" the "public" link in the Explorer when you log in to all users in the system, you can do the following:
Enter "regedit" in the search box of the Start menu. ",Open the Registry Editor. Of course, this is an operation that triggers UAC, and it needs to be confirmed before it can be performed.
Find the following registry branch: HKEY_LOCAL_MacHINE– SOFTWARE– – Microsoft– – – Windows – – – – CurrentVersion– – – – - explorer– – – – - - Desktop– – – – - - - NameSpace– – – – - - - {4336a54d-038b-4685-ab02-99bb52d3fb8b}
Right-click {4336a54d-038b-4685-ab02-99bb52d3fb8b} in the left panel and select "Delete".
If you are using 64-bit Windows Vista (x64), the corresponding registry key is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MacHINE– SOFTWARE– - Wow6432Node– – - Microsoft– – – - Windows– – – – - CurrentVersion – – – – - - explorer– – – – - - - Desktop– – – – - - - - NameSpace– – – – - - - - {4336a54d-038b-4685-ab02-99bb52d3fb8b}
A link to the public folder no longer appears in the browser.