Display Mapped Drives’ Drive Letters First

Thursday, December 9th, 2004
by Marc Erickson

PROBLEM: Windows Explorer and application file dialog drop-down boxes display
mapped drives as <Drive Description> <Drive Letter> - (eg Hamish on
MyServer\Data\Homedirs H:). This is often a problem with narrow fixed-width dialog
boxes. A much easier way to see it would be <Drive Letter> <Drive Description>
(eg H: Hamish on MyServer\Data\HomeDirs)

SOLUTION: In regedit, go to: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer, edit or create the DWORD value “ShowDriveLettersFirst” and set it to the desired value: (4 for the Drive letter before Description)

* 0 = Default display (drive letters after description)
* 1 = Network drive letters first, Local drive letters after
* 2 = Descriptions only, no drive letters displayed
* 4 = Drive letters before description

If you have any questions you may contact Hamish at HamishAThaitch.net

3 Comments

Wayne K.

November 15th, 2006
at 10:13am

How is this done in Windows 2000?

Marc Erickson

February 1st, 2007
at 10:09pm

I would try the same Registry edit - XP and 2000 are so similar that it should work (Microsoft calls Windows 2000 Windows NT 5.0 and Windows XP Windows NT 5.1).

Don Williams

November 16th, 2007
at 8:47am

Where is this registry change made? On the users workstations, the AD DC, or in my case the Citrix server the users are logging into?

Thanks
DonW.

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