How To Hide Additional Drive Letters On A Server

Carl Webster — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:58:12 +0000

When Creating a Server Management Group Policy on Windows Server 2003, there are two options that can be set to either Hide or Prevent users from working with the server’s drives:

Hide these specified drives in My Computer
Prevent access to drives from My Computer

When these options are enabled, there is a drop-down box that allows the selection of various drive combinations. What if the drives you need hidden are not on the list? This article will show you three ways to add any combination of drive letters to be hidden or denied access:

Modify System.adm
Create a new ADM file
Use the ICAClient.adm file provided by Citrix

Why bother with either manual process when there is a 3rd Party utility called GPDrivesOptions that automates the creation of the necessary information? There are places that do not allow 3^rd Party utilities to be run on Domain Controllers or Management Stations. Also, if Change Management is used, it may take longer to go through the approval process to modify System.adm than it takes to create a new ADM file and use it for your Group Policy.

Update February 26, 2015: The GPDrivesOptions article no longer exists on Petri.com.

Microsoft has KB article 231289 that explains the process to add custom drive letter combinations. Using KB231298, if you wanted to hide access to drives A, B, D, E, G, P, and R:

The 26-bit string of drive letters is represented as:

11111111111111111111111111
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA

If you prefer to not work in Binary, the decimal value for each drive letter is:

Drive Letter	Decimal Value	Binary Value
Z	33554432	10000000000000000000000000
Y	16777216	1000000000000000000000000
X	8388608	100000000000000000000000
W	4194304	10000000000000000000000
V	2097152	1000000000000000000000
U	1048576	100000000000000000000
T	524288	10000000000000000000
S	262144	1000000000000000000
R	131072	100000000000000000
Q	65536	10000000000000000
P	32768	1000000000000000
O	16384	100000000000000
N	8192	10000000000000
M	4096	1000000000000
L	2048	100000000000
K	1024	10000000000
J	512	1000000000
I	256	100000000
H	128	10000000
G	64	1000000
F	32	100000
E	16	10000
D	8	1000
C	4	100
B	2	10
A	1	1

Putting “0”s for the drives to not be hidden results in:

00000000101000000001011011
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA

The binary string is 101000000001011011. Converted to decimal is 163,931.

If you prefer to work with decimal, add up the value for each drive letter:

A	1
B	2
D	8
E	16
G	64
P	32768
R	131072
	163931

Method 1 — Modify System.adm:

To change System.adm, go to a command prompt and type in the following commands:

CD %SYSTEMROOT%\INF and press Enter
COPY SYSTEM.ADM SYSTEM_BACKUP.ADM and press Enter
Notepad system.adm

With Notepad open, press Ctrl-F and Find [strings]. Add this line to the [strings] section:

ABDEGPR_Only=”Restrict A, B, D, E, G, P and R drives only”

Press Ctrl-Home to return to the top, then press Ctrl-F and Find !!NoDrives. Add this entry in the ITEMLIST section for !!NoDrives:

NAME !!ABDEGPR_Only VALUE NUMERIC 163931

Scroll down just a little until you see the !!NoViewOnDrive Policy. Add this entry in the ITEMLIST section for !!NoViewOnDrive Save the System.adm file and exit Notepad.

NAME !!ABDEGPR_Only VALUE NUMERIC 163931

See Figures 1 and 2 for system.adm before changes and Figures 3 and 4 for system.adm after changes.

Figure 1 (system.adm before changes)

Figure 2 (system.adm before changes)

Figure 3 (system.adm after changes)

Figure 4 (system.adm after changes)

Save the System.adm file, exit Notepad and exit the command prompt. In the Group Policy Object Editor, right-click Administrative Templates in the User Configuration section and select Add/Remove Templates… (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Click system and then the Remove button (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Click the Add… button, scroll to find system.adm, click system.adm, and then click Open (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Click Close (Figure 8).

Figure 8

Expand Administrative Templates, expand Windows Components, click Windows Explorer and double-click Hide these specified drives from My Computer (Figure 9).

Figure 9

Click the Dropdown box, the new drive restriction selection is now available (Figure 10).

Figure 10

Select the new drive restriction and repeat for the Prevent access to drives from My Computer policy setting (Figure 11).

Figure 11

Exit editing the GPO and the new drive restrictions have been added to your GPO.

Method 2 — Create a new ADM file:

Why use Method 2? If changes are not allowed to be made or Change Control processes must be followed to make changes to files installed by the Operating System, then Method 2 is an easy option. It should take less than five minutes to complete Method 2.

To create a new ADM file, go to a command prompt and type in the following commands:

CD %SYSTEMROOT%\INF and press Enter
Notepad HideDrives.adm
Answer Yes to the Do you want to create a new file? popup

Enter, or copy and paste, the following text into the new HideDrives.adm file:

#if version >= 3
CLASS USER
CATEGORY !!WindowsComponents
	CATEGORY !!WindowsExplorer
		KEYNAME "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer"
		POLICY !!NoDrives
			EXPLAIN !!NoDrives_Help
			PART !!NoDrivesDropdown       DROPDOWNLIST NOSORT REQUIRED
			VALUENAME "NoDrives"
				ITEMLIST
					NAME !!ShowAll       VALUE NUMERIC       0
					NAME !!HideAll       VALUE NUMERIC       67108863 DEFAULT
					NAME !!ABDEGPR_Only       VALUE NUMERIC       163931
				END ITEMLIST
			END PART
		END POLICY
		POLICY !!NoViewOnDrive
			EXPLAIN !!NoViewOnDrive_Help
			PART !!NoViewOnDriveDropdown       DROPDOWNLIST NOSORT REQUIRED
			VALUENAME "NoViewOnDrive"
				ITEMLIST
					NAME !!ShowAll       VALUE NUMERIC       0
					NAME !!HideAll       VALUE NUMERIC       67108863 DEFAULT
					NAME !!ABDEGPR_Only       VALUE NUMERIC       163931
				END ITEMLIST
			END PART
		END POLICY
	END CATEGORY ; WindowsExplorer
END CATEGORY ; WindowsComponents
#endif
[strings]
NoDrives="Show only certain drives in My Computer"
NoDrives_Help="Removes the icons representing all but selected hard drives from My Computer"
NoDrivesDropdown="Pick one of the following combinations"
NoViewOnDrive="Prevent access to drives from My Computer."
NoViewOnDrive_Help="Prevents users from using My Computer to gain access to the content of selected drives."
NoViewOnDriveDropdown="Pick one of the following combinations"
WindowsComponents="Windows Components"
WindowsExplorer="Windows Explorer"
ShowAll="Show all drives"
HideAll="Hide all drives"
ABDEGPR_Only="Restrict A, B, D, E, G, P and R drives only"

Save the HideDrives.adm file, exit Notepad, and exit the command prompt. In the Group Policy Object Editor, create a New Group Policy Object (GPO), name it Hide Server Drives. Edit the Hide Server Drives GPO, right-click Administrative Templates in the User Configuration section, and select Add/Remove Templates… (Figure 12).

Update 10-Jan-2014. To keep you from having weird characters placed in your text file by Copy & Paste, I have placed a copy of HideDrives.adm here.

Figure 12

In this GPO, the only policies used are:

Hide these specified drives in My Computer
Prevent access to drives from My Computer

To remove excess policies for this single purpose group policy, remove the other five Policy Templates (Figure 13):

conf
inetres
system
wmplayer
wuau

Figure 13

Click Add…, click HideDrives.adm, and then click Open (Figure 14).

Figure 14

Click Close (Figure 15).

Figure 15

Expand Administrative Templates, expand Windows Components, click Windows Explorer and double-click Hide these specified drives from My Computer (Figure 16).

Figure 16

Click Enabled and from the drop-down box select the new Restrict A, B, D, E, G, P and R drives only option (Figure 17).

Figure 17

Repeat for the Prevent access to drives from My Computer policy setting (Figure 18).

Figure 18

Exit editing the GPO and the new drive restrictions have been added to your GPO.

Method 3 — Use the ICAClient.adm file provided by Citrix:

If you are using Citrix XenApp and are also using the ICA Client version 10.x or higher than Citrix (akes available ICAClient.adm. Using this ADM file allows you to specify any combination of drive letters with no math involved. Also, this ADM file is fully supported by Citrix if it has not been altered. Citrix recommends using ICAClient.adm as the preferred way of controlling drives. This GPO, in conjunction with the client-side XenApp plug-in, controls access to the specified drive letters.

Either download ICAClient.adm.zip and extract the ICAClient.adm file to c:\Windows\inf or copy the file from C:\Program Files\Citrix\ICA Client\Configuration. In the Group Policy Object Editor, create a New Group Policy Object (GPO), name it ICAClient Hide Server Drives. Edit the Hide Server Drives GPO, right-click Administrative Templates in the User Configuration section, and select Add/Remove Templates… (Figure 19).

Figure 19

In this GPO, the only policy that will be used is Client drive mapping.

To remove excess policies for this single purpose group policy, remove the other five Policy Templates (Figure 20):

conf
inetres
system
wmplayer
wuau

Figure 20

Click Add…, click icaclient.adm, and then click Open (Figure 21).

Figure 21

Click Close (Figure 22).

Figure 22

Expand Administrative Templates, expand Citrix Components, expand Presentation Server Client, click Remoting client devices, and double-click Client drive mapping (Figure 23).

Figure 23

Click Enabled, make sure Enable client drive mapping is checked and enter ABDEGPR in the box for Do not map drives: and click OK (Figure 24).

Figure 24

Exit editing the GPO and the new drive restrictions have been added to your GPO.

In this article, you learned three methods of adding additional drive letters to hide or prevent access for use on your Terminal or XenApp Servers.

Thanks

Webster

Windows Server 2003 – Carl Webster

How To Hide Additional Drive Letters On A Server