Microsoft renamed My Computer to Computer and then to This PC in Windows 8.1. It followed the same in Windows 10. Along with this name change, Microsoft introduced the display of 6 folders namely Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads, Music and Desktop in This PC in both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
Those who did not want to display these folders found a way to hide these folders from This PC in Windows 8.1. This procedure will not work in Windows 10, as things are a bit differemt.
Remove the Folders from This PC in Windows 10
Even though you know how to show or hide folders from This PC in Windows 8.1, the same way is not possible in Windows 10 as Microsoft has changed Registry Keys a bit in Windows 10. But, do not worry. In this tutorial, I will let you know how to remove the 6 personal folders from This PC in Windows 10.
In Windows 10 Microsoft is maintaining a string
ThisPCPolicy with a value of
Show or
Hide based on which folder is shown or hidden in
This PC. If you set the
ThisPCPolicy value to
show, then that particular folder is shown in This PC and if you set that value to
Hide, then that folder is hidden from “This PC” in Windows 10.
Follow These Steps to show or hide folders from This PC in Windows 10Press
WIN+R key and open the RUN Dialog box and type “
regedit” and hit enter. It opens the Registry Editor.
Next, we need to go to the following keys one after the other and need to change the value of
ThisPCPolicy to
Hide to hide that particular folder from “This PC” window in Windows 10.
Documents Folder:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{f42ee2d3-909f-4907-8871-4c22fc0bf756}\PropertyBag
Pictures Folder:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{0ddd015d-b06c-45d5-8c4c-f59713854639}\PropertyBag
Videos Folder:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{35286a68-3c57-41a1-bbb1-0eae73d76c95}\PropertyBag
Downloads Folder:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{7d83ee9b-2244-4e70-b1f5-5393042af1e4}\PropertyBag
Music Folder:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{a0c69a99-21c8-4671-8703-7934162fcf1d}\PropertyBag
Desktop Folder:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641}\PropertyBag
As an example, let me show it for
Pictures Folders and hide it from “This PC” window.
Open Registry Editor and navigate to the key specified and change the value of
ThisPCPolicy to
Hide.
Now, close the Registry Editor and open the “This PC” folder. You could see that,
Pictures folder from “This PC” window has been removed.
To get back the Pictures folder back, go the respective key and change the value of ThisPCPolicy to Show and you could see the Pictures folder again.
In this way, you need to change the value of
ThisPCPolicy to
Hide for all the 6 keys to hide them from the This PC window.
Note: All the above mentioned keys has the ThisPCPolicy string except for the key {B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641} which is related to the
Desktop folder. For this, you need to create the string
ThisPCPolicy for the desktop key and change it’s value to
Hide.
twc
