Knowledge Base

There can be various reasons for hiding a Windows NT computer from the Network Neighborhood.

First, building and maintaining the list of computers you see in Network Neighborhood causes network traffic and reduces the overall performance of your network. If you have computers that do not share anything (such as computers running Windows NT Workstation), you might want to prevent them from being listed in Network Neighborhood. In this case, you can stop the computer from appearing in the list by stopping the Server service:

1. Open the Windows Control Panel (e.g. in Windows XP: Start.Settings.Control Panel).
2. Double-click on the Administrative Tools icon.
3. In the Administrative Tools dialog, double-click on the Servicesshortcut.
4. From the Services dialog, double-click on Server to open the Server Properties dialog.
5. In the drop-down box for Startup type, change the setting to Manual.
6. Select Stop to stop the Server service.
7. Select OK then close the dialogs including the Control Panel.

The other reason why you might want to hide a computer from the Network Neighborhood is to make it inaccessible to users who are simply browsing the network. To do so,

• Run the following command in a Command Prompt window :

net config server /hidden:yes

This command hides the computer from the Network Neighborhood, but leaves the Server service running. Thus, you can still connect to the computer by mapping a drive to a shared folder.

It will take a few minutes for your computer to drop out of the Network Neighborhood.