Windows 10 Tip: Disable Quick Access

I had an unsettling experience today, which turned out to be caused by one of Windows 10's "helpful" features: Quick Access.
 
I have batch files for backing up SONAR projects to an external USB drive which is normally assigned to "F:". It has been consistently assigned to the F: drive through multiple Windows versions. My batch file therefore assumes it's F: and I've used it every day for years without incident.
 
Then this morning the batch file tells me there is no F: drive.
 
The drive's power indicator was on, so it hopefully hadn't gone to USB drive heaven like all of its predecessors. I rebooted. Still no F: drive. I unplug the drive and let Windows re-discover it. Still no F: drive. I open File Explorer (which used to be called Windows Explorer) and it shows an icon labeled "F", but it's not my external disk. It also shows that the external drive is now "G:".
 
Here's what happened. I had created a folder called "F". When I opened it, Windows automatically added it to my Quick Access list (what used to be called Favorites). Now I had a quick-access folder named F, so Windows refused to assign F as a drive letter, presumably to avoid confusion. And broke my batch file in the process of trying to be helpful.
 
I am scared to find out what would happen if I created a folder named "C".
 
This is not a friendly feature, IMO, so I disabled it. Here's how: open File Explorer and go to the File tab, then select "change folder and search options". Change the "Open File Explorer to..." option from "Quick Access" to "This PC". Now, when you press Win-E you get the Win 7/8 display that only shows physical devices. Next, go down to "Privacy" and un-check both options to prevent recently-used files and frequently-used folders from being added to Quick Access.
 
This does not disable the Quick Access feature. You can still manually add files and folders to the list with a simple right-click and select "pin to quick access". That's the way I want the feature to work: let me decide what goes on the list.
 
The friendlier Windows gets, the less-inclined I am to call it a friend.
 
 
 
 

Thanks Bit. Very grateful to hear about thiskind of thing.

That F folder got all F'd up then?

I've seen a similar thing. I know of two different work-arounds: You can assign an external drive a specific fixed drive letter. This is a good approach to avoid the "order you plug USB drives in" problem. Assigned drive letters seems to take precedence, but I've never see a quick-link override a drive letter, so maybe not in your situation
 
A more technical approach is to mount the drive with group policy, which takes places fairly early in the boot/login process. That's how e.g. network home directories get mounted on enterprise systems.
 
I pre-assign all my backup drives. So when I plug in the image drive it shows up as e.g. letter "O:", but when it's the source backup, is "S:", etc.

BassDaddy
Thanks Bit. Very grateful to hear about thiskind of thing.

10 was off to a great start. From the release to the patch in November, they were doing a simply fantastic job. Then the patch came out and really started messing with things, the announcement for their new Lumia came and ended up bombing because they didn't market it enough and pretty much everything they've been working on feels fragmented or half-assed.
 
Gates coming back was a huge thing for the company and I think it was the push they needed. I am thinking he's back to being less involved because it's all starting to fall apart again.

bitflipper
It used to be that you could instruct Windows which drive letter to start with when assigning new devices, but I don't see that capability in Windows 10. It would be really handy if every time I plugged in an extra device I could be sure it'd be mounted as G:. Any thoughts on that?

I summarized that in the post following the one you replied to. If you assign driver letters with Disk Management, my experience is that it sticks. There is probably still an issue with if e.g. a MP3 player has taken F: before you put in the backup drive, but I'm not sure.
 
That is, btw, why I have my fixed drive mounts starting at M: (far away from dynamically assigned drives)
 
Interestingly, B: is generally free, and since dynamic assignments start after the fixed drives (C:, D:) using B: for backup is possible.