Registry question

Hi all. My question has two parts:

Part 1) The following net-trolled instruction (shown in full, in Part 2 below) reads:
"You can prevent the automatic addition of shortcuts by setting
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\
NoRecentDocsNetHood = 1 "

Is this guy talking about creating a new sub-KEY under Explorer? Or a new VALUE? I've always been a bit hazy about Keys, Strings, DWords and the like.

Part 2) The reason I'm examining this process is that my XPPro 'Network Places' folder on my main pc keeps getting cluttered, as up to six computers make up my LAN and I frequently access them from the main machine. I searched for a fix and this looked interesting:

"Slow network browsing in Windows XP
Shortcuts in 'My Network Places' make network browsing very slow.

If the 'My Network Places' folder contains a shortcut to a network share, then each refresh of the explorer window will attempt to read icon information from every file in the remote location, causing the system to slow to a crawl.

Removing all shortcuts from 'My Network Places' will return the system response to normal.

Every time you open a file via a UNC name, Windows XP will automatically add another shortcut to the 'My Network Places' folder - so the issue tends to get worse over time.

You can prevent the automatic addition of shortcuts by setting
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\
NoRecentDocsNetHood = 1' "

What do you guys think? Or is it simpler to just weed out the new entries in the folder from time to time?

Edit: I should have explained that I've renamed many of the shortcuts in the Network Places folder with relevant titles like, CG0, CG1, CG2, CG3 Download, etc etc, and these are all OK. It's the constant addition of stuff named 'Shortcut to C', 'Shared docs on...', etc, that I'm trying to stop.

 

Thanks TonyT. So it's just a new DWORD value (which I understand means 'double-word') of the Explorer key? Kind of confusing. If you know of any very, very basic howto's for Registry tyros, please post the links.

Cheers

PS: Your explanation was succinct and well-put. Would that all information be presented so comprehensibly

 

Thanks TonyT, great link. The registry information is clear and comprehensible and the site is well worth exploring.

BTW, your LRH signature quote is interesting, reminds me of something else he said with regard to the exchange of information. It went something like this: For most people who set out to learn new information from a printed source such as a book or a website, they will continue to absorb the information only as far as the first concept that they fail to understand. As soon as that occurs the learning process stops and further reading is pointless until that concept is fully grasped and understood.

It certainly works that way for me. If I read a page and it all makes sense only up until the end of the second paragraph, or the first technical term that makes me say, 'Wha..?', then nothing that follows will 'sink in'.

 

Thanks again, TonyT, another excellent link. There's a lot of good stuff in that article, I didn't realize that the problem had been so well documented.

The internet has unlimited potential for the exchange of information. Unfortunately, so much of the information is badly presented that a lot of it is wasted.