Hide The Network Neighborhood Icon

Hide The Network Neighborhood Icon

Network users frequently click into Network Neighborhood, sometimes looking for resources they need, or just to see what they can find. Frequent network browsing can create network traffic jams by causing master browsers and backup browsers to repeatedly rebuild resource lists. You may want to consider alternatives. First, make the resources available to users through and appropriate share. Then, to prevent curious users from misusing Network Neighborhood, you may want to hide the Network Neighborhood icon by making a registry change:

Open the Registry Editor and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Now add a DWORD value, and name it NoEntireNetwork.

Set the value for the DWORD to 1. (The default is 0 if the registry entry already exists.)

Save your changes and restart your system.

All network resources will still be available through a UNC path or through the use of net commands, but only the users who really need will access them in this manner.