Citrix: Remove Favorites from the Explorer in Windows 7/ Windows 2008 R2

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Kees Baggerman·Senior Technical Director at Nutanix – Former Citrix CTP – NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor – 15+ years in EUC

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I often publish a desktop in my projects and most of the times the new favorites folder in the explorer has to be removed because it’s not easily managed. I found the following method is pretty straightforward and works too.

Yuri Haak and a couple of other smart guys figured this out on the RESUG forum so I took their tips and made some automation possible. To change the reg keys that can remove the favorites from the explorer you first have to change the rights on the registry key, I did this by using Helge Klein’s SetACL which is an easy tool for such small (but tricky) adjustments.

The following command lines can be used:

“SetACL_x64.exe -on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E}\ShellFolder” -ot reg -actn ace -ace “n:Administrators;p:full”

“SetACL_x64.exe -on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E}\ShellFolder” -ot reg -actn ace -ace “n:Administrators;p:full”

After setting the appropriate rights you can change the reg keys so that the Favorites aren’t displayed anymore, I did this by using the following reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E}\ShellFolder]

“Attributes”=dword:a9400100

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E}\ShellFolder]

“Attributes”=dword:a9400100

To use this you can save the text into a .reg file and import the file by using the following command:

regedit -s Disable_Favorites.reg

After a reboot the Favorites folder won’t be displayed in the Explorer anymore.

Note: Do this on a test server first before you implement this on your production environtment.

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Kees Baggerman

Kees Baggerman is Senior Technical Director — Performance & Solutions Engineering R&D at Nutanix, where he leads a global team responsible for defining how enterprise applications are delivered on the Nutanix platform. A former Citrix Technology Professional and NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor, he has spent 15+ years driving EUC strategy and technical direction across architecture, product, and customer success. He has been writing here since 2011 — sharing what he learns at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise IT.

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Kees Baggerman

Senior Technical Director at Nutanix - Former Citrix CTP - NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor - 15+ years in EUC

Kees Baggerman is Senior Technical Director — Performance & Solutions Engineering R&D at Nutanix, where he leads a global team responsible for defining how enterprise applications are delivered on the Nutanix platform. A former Citrix Technology Professional and NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor, he has spent 15+ years driving EUC strategy and technical direction across architecture, product, and customer success. He has been writing here since 2011 — sharing what he learns at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise IT.

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