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File Explorer is the tool or application used to manage files and folders in the Windows operating system. It’s broken down into several sections such as the toolbar on the top and the navigation pane on the left. To access your files and folders, you can select the drive you want to open from the navigation pane on the left and then browse to the folder that has the files you need to work on.
If you were to expand This PC in the navigation pane, you would see that you now have your drives shown twice. If this is not something you want to see, then you can follow these steps to remove duplicate drives from the navigation pane in File Explorer.
To remove these duplicate drives, we will be using a registry file to make this change and there is also another registry file you can use to reverse the process if you want things back to the way they were. You can download both registry files here. You should always be careful when doing this type of thing and you may also want to consider making a system restore point before doing so.
The text below shows the contents of the registry file we will be using to remove duplicate drives from the navigation pane in File Explorer. You can also right click the registry files and choose Edit in Notepad to see this information on your computer.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\DelegateFolders\{F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83}]
To import the registry changes into your computer, you can simply double click the Remove Duplicate Drives.reg file and click the Run button on the next screen.
You will then receive a UAC prompt asking you to approve the changes. You can click the Yes button to continue.
Next, you will be asked if you want to continue adding the information from the registry file into the Windows registry by clicking on the Yes button again.
The final prompt will tell you that the registry changes have been made successfully and you can then click the OK button.
If the changes do not take effect right away, you can either restart the computer or restart Windows Explorer. To restart Windows Explorer, right click on the taskbar and choose Task Manager. Then find Windows Explorer in the list, right click it and choose Restart. You will see your icons and taskbar disappear and then they should come right back.
Now when you open File Explorer, you should see that your drives are only listed once in the navigation pane under This PC.
To reverse the process and put things back to the way they originally were, you can double click the Add Duplicate Drives.reg file and go through the same process, including restarting the computer or Windows Explorer.
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