Windows 8.1 bought some of the more common folders to the top of the “This PC” window. Having used Windows since its inception, we find this looks odd and sought to fix it.

If you’re using Windows 10, the process is a bit different, and you’ll need to read our article on hiding folders from This PC in Windows 10, or you can read about disabling Quick Access in Windows 10.

How to Remove the “Folders” From My Computer in Windows 8.1

Press the Win + R keyboard combination to bring up a run box, then type “regedit” and press enter.

When the registry editor opens, navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\





You can see in the above screen shot that there are several registry keys with convoluted names. Most of them are mapped to one of those folders you see in the explorer Window. We managed to figure out which is which through trial and error, here are our findings:

Desktop Folder – {B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641} Documents Folder – {A8CDFF1C-4878-43be-B5FD-F8091C1C60D0} Downloads Folder – {374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B} Music Folder – {1CF1260C-4DD0-4ebb-811F-33C572699FDE} Pictures Folder – {3ADD1653-EB32-4cb0-BBD7-DFA0ABB5ACCA} Videos Folder – {A0953C92-50DC-43bf-BE83-3742FED03C9C}

To remove the folders from the explorer window, simply delete the corresponding registry key using the information provided above.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Of course, if you are not comfortable hacking around in the registry you can just run one of the handy registry files we have created for you.

When its all said and done, you can have that familiar look and feel back.