Configure the scanning for network shares and printers
There is a builtin scanner that crawls/scans/searches the network and any shares or printers discovered are automatically added to My Network Places or Printers and Faxes.
The scanner/crawler is started in the following situations:
- At startup
- When opening My Network Places
- When refreshing My Network Places by pressing F5
The scanner is not started if one of the following conditions are true:
- If more than 10 computers are detected sharing folders (To be gentle on corporate networks)
- If using DUN or VPN connection
- If the scanner is disabled.
The scanner saves its findings here (If more than 7 days old then they are deleted)
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Explorer \Netcrawl \Shares]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Explorer \Netcrawl \Printers]
To disable the automatic scanning:
- Open Control Panel
- Double click Folder Options (Inside the grouping Appearance and Themes)
- Select the View tab
- In the Advanced Settings list uncheck Automatically search for network folders and printers
It is reflected with this DWORD value in the registry:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Explorer \Advanced]
NoNetCrawling = 1
More Info MS KB276322 (WinMe)
More Info MS KB320138