Homegroup - Add or Remove from Navigation Pane

Hello BuckSkin, :)

No worries. Removing "Homegroup" from the navigation pane is only cosmetic, and will not affect any network abilities.

Doing what they posted at that link will completely disable Homegroup causing it to no longer work or be available.

Yes, using workgroup will still work.

speedgamer01 said:

I'd like to add an alternative way of removing homegroup :)

I'll have to give my vote to the alternative as the Registry edit approach didn't work for me. Just in case link goes bad:

1. go to Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Services
2. for both HomeGroup Listener and HomeGroup Provider: Right Click, select Properties, Stop (if started) and Disable

Change occurs immediately, no reboot required. Close Explorer and re-open. HomeGroup is gone.


Caveat: I've only one account on my computer and it is an Admin account so I don't if this will work without Admin permissions. If you're mucking about in the Registry, though, it's highly likely you've got an Admin account.

Hello @Ritjesman,

Just to verify, did you restart the computer after making changes in the registry using steps 8 and 9 to apply?

Brink said:

Hello @Ritjesman,

Just to verify, did you restart the computer after making changes in the registry using steps 8 and 9 to apply?

Yes I did. There was very odd aspect w/the regedit approach though: I thought I noticed some of the entries (located w/find) were identical to the values I was supposed to be changing them to ... hummmm, now I'll have double-check I was using the correct code.


Update: being as the only differences between Add & Delete are 8 or 9 in the third character I can't rely strictly on memory. I'll enable/start the services then re-do the regedit. Will have an Update2 shortly...

Ritjesman said:

Yes I did. There was very odd aspect w/the regedit approach though: I thought I noticed some of the entries (located w/find) were identical to the values I was supposed to be changing them to ... hummmm, now I'll have double-check I was using the correct code.


Update: being as the only differences between Add & Delete are 8 or 9 in the third character I can't rely strictly on memory. I'll enable/start the services then re-do the regedit. Will have an Update2 shortly...

Update2: The plot thickens. Using regedit find (& runassystem) for:
B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93


I find 4 instances with the Shell Folder\Attribute subs all set to 0xb094010c and HomeGroup is still showing in explorer. When I use a tool called Registry Finder (Registry Finder) it finds a plethora of entries for B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93. Searching for b094010c it only finds 3 instances. Searching for b084010c gets us 2 instances:

So a total of 5 instances, one less of the Delete code than expected, 1 that this tool is showing with Add code that's displaying as a Delete code via regedit and 1 (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) that I'm not seeing via regedit.


Searching for b094010c or b084010c using regedit find w/keys, values and data all checked results in "not found". I'll defer to you to interpret these findings.


[Edit3] Woke up thinking about this. Here's some additional info.



When editing the 2 remaining "8" codes via regedit and right clicking the context menu for the two records has Properties rather than expected Permissions and selecting Properties than Security tab results in following:

Since I am editing with System level permissions I guess that may indicate the 2 records are root level which could explain why they''re not being displayed in normal regedit window.


Lastly (don't know if it's relevant) my machine is configured with a single boot partition achieved with EasyBCD.