How to Clean Up Mapped Drive Folders and Rename Mapped Drives

In a recent post I described taking over 15 hours to get a small Simple File Sharing network to function using a XPPro and XPHome computer. When I finally got it to work I had such a menagerie of mixed up folder names and mapped drives names I couldn't keep anything straight. Soooo.....

Clean Up Mapped Drive Folders:

First of all, when I clicked Map Network Drive and selected the dropdown box for "Folders:" I had so many obsolete folders in the list it was useless. I discovered where to go in the registry to clean up that list. (Insert usual cautions about editing the registry.)

In the registry under "Map Network Drive MRU", I just deleted everything but (Default). That's it.

Then the :Folders:" dropdown box is empty but each time you map a new drive it will show up in the registry here and in the "Folders" dropdown box from then on.

Rename mapped Drives:

When I would map a network drive, I would get some really screwy names. This came about because I had been networking various computers for years and renaming them and changing hard drives.

It seems that the first time you map a drive, the local computer gives it a name based on the name of the remote computer and the name you put in the sharing fields on the remote computer. Then, if you change the name of the remote computer, the local computer keeps using the old computer name. It can be real confusing. I tried to just rename the mapped drive (right click, rename) on the local computer but XP makes that real difficult. It seems that no matter how long the name is that it displays, XP doesn't want it to be more than 11 or 12 characters. If you just delete a few and still exceed 11 or 12, it will accept it, But if you delete to less than 11 or 12, you can't go back to more characters.

You can go into the registry to MountPoints2 and you will see a list that includes every drive that was ever opened. If you click on one of them, you might see a field "_LabelFromReg". If you don't, go back to My Computer and attempt to rename the drive. You will see that "_LabelFromReg" is now created. Right click "_LabelFromReg", modify, and give it the name you want to use. Any length. Go back to My Computer, F5 and see the new name.

Hope this helps.

Pete