Subject: EWNTips: Hiding a Windows NT computer from the Network Neighborhood 
From: tips@elementktips.com
To: ewntips@elementktips.com
Message-ID: <bulk.24262.20000515175715@mail.elementktips.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 17:58:23 -0400


Hiding a Windows NT computer from the Network Neighborhood

There are a couple of good reasons why you might want to hide a 
Windows NT computer from the Network Neighborhood. First of all, 
building and maintaining the list of computers you see in Network 
Neighborhood takes a lot of network traffic, and reduces the overall 
performance of your network. If you have computers that don't share 
anything (such as computers running Windows NT Workstation), you 
might want to prevent them from being listed in Network Neighborhood. 
In this scenario, you can stop the computer from showing up by 
stopping the Server service. In Control Panel, double-click 
Services. From the list of Services, select Server, then click 
Startup. Change the Startup type to Manual, then click OK. Now click 
Stop to stop the Server service. 

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. Note: It will 
take a few minutes for your computer to drop out of the Network 
Neighborhood.