No drives show in My Computer

[aileen]

If I am trying to open My Computer then the first page that shows is blank, no drives show, Control Panel doesnt show, just a blank white page am getting. I am able to access any of my drives by dropping down the location list as the drives all show there. Also the file and open dialogs for some programs also cant be see the drives and show only the desktop folder. I used TweakUI to unhide the drives but that didnt work and I tried setting the registry entry that controls whether the drives show with no results. Can anyone tell me why My Computer wont show my drives on its starting page? Thanks.

[Coolestman]

Could you please tell us what did you already try that didnt work for you? You will need to specify what kind of problems you are getting so that we can give you proper solutions.

[Jerry]

Can you tell us whether you are seeing a left pane and a right pane in Windows Explorer? In Windows Explorer select Tools > Folder Options. On the Tasks tab have you selected Show common tasks in Folder or Use Classic Windows Folders. On the View tab under Advanced Settings there are a lot of settings, which will affect what is displayed. One which may answer one of your questions is Show Control Panel in My Computer. Is it checked?

[aileen]

Thanks for the replies, I have just found and downloaded and installed the Group Policy Editor and have used it to try to unhide the drives in my computer. It is taking a while to find the setting, I then disabled hiding the drives and started my computer and was once again greeted with a blank white page. I have still to restart my pc and see if it works?

[Hockson]

You should know that by default Group Policies refresh at 90 minutes intervals, for user policies (as opposed to machine policies) login the user off and back on should force the new policies to be applied without actually rebooting the machine. You can also manually force a Group Policy refresh without a reboot or logoff with the gpupdate command, but I'm not sure that this command is available on XP Home, I kind of doubt, try issuing the command at a Command Prompt and see what happens.

[aileen]

I have now solved the issue. I just had to install Group Policy Editor and then set the setting for hiding drives in my computer to the opposite of what i wanted it to be, then setting it back to hide only the A and B drives. After that I restarted my pc to take effect and now all the drives are shown in my computer. Thanks