In Windows Vista, file sharing through public folders is quite convenient, especially when sharing between multiple users using the same PC: any resources stored in public folders, including documents, downloads, music, pictures, Video, etc., can be used by other users on the colleague's PC and network users with public folder access.
At the same time, it is quite convenient for users to access the contents of the public folder, just open the resource manager, etc. You can find shortcuts to public folders directly in the Favorites link.
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, etc.
Therefore, for security reasons, we often recommend not to use public folders, but to make more detailed settings in the file storage location for more secure access.
Let Explorer not show public folder links again
However, public folders cannot be virtually disabled or deleted in Windows Vista, ie the "C:\\Users\\Public\\" directory cannot be deleted, otherwise, May affect the normal operation of Windows Vista.
So even if you don't want to share through public folders, you can only do not copy any content into the directory, so that it becomes an "empty directory" in a sense, at least others can't See your private files through public folders.
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;
Let Explorer no longer show public folder links
Enter directly in the command line window:
del %userprofile%\\Links\\Public.lnk
Note that even under Chinese Windows Vista, "public" The shortcut for the item is also "Public.lnk" instead of "Public .lnk". Don't be confused by the Chinese character "public" displayed in the graphical interface.
Hiding 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 are multiple users on the same computer, Then, when you log in to the system with a different user account, there will still be a "public" link in the Explorer unless you do something similar for all users.
If you want to "see" the "public" link in the Explorer when you log in all the 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. Locate the following registry branch:
HKEY_LOCAL_MacHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\ Windows\\CurrentVersion
\\explorer\\Desktop\\NameSpace\\
Right-click 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\\
Links to public folders no longer appear in Manager.