Here’s the rest of the notes, and all the paths that seemed to work for other people. I take these notes for in case I come back to a problem months later & i’ve forgotten the whole story.
I did a deep dive today to try to get Adobe’s zombie “Creative Cloud Files” out of my Windows Explorer. (Sorry, Linux and Mac users)
Found a lot of tech support articles but none have worked yet. Here’s what I tried:
---- Some 2015 advice said “turn off syncing then sign out of the Creative Cloud App”. I already uninstalled the app… idk here’s the link - community.adobe.com/t5/…/7293612
---- Adobe said “download PinCCF.zip and run it”. Tried, didn’t work. But I do see what it did: edit the registry, which is where most of the other help articles point.
<span style="color:#323232;">- Adobe's nonhelp: https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/remove-cc-files-folder-shortcut-navigation-panel.html
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</span><span style="color:#323232;">- This just adds a key to your Windows registry (to be specific, it's in- DON'T GO MESSING WITH THIS YET - "HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesAdobeCreativeCloud", and it sets a flag "unPinCCF" to 1. Idk, I wouldn't mess with this just yet. (Make a copy of the registry! Create a restore point! Idk, or don't be safe)
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</span><span style="color:#323232;">- https://nerdschalk.com/create-restore-point-windows-11/
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<span style="color:#323232;">- It referenced this regkey: HKEY_USERSS-1-5-21-323958827-3581141789-1914103306-1006SoftwareClassesCLSID{0E270DAA-1BE6-48F2-AC49-36B2E0D3E20C}
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</span><span style="color:#323232;">- TLDR : change the value of System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree from 1 to 0 (just click OK for it to save). For this user, it worked. You migh have to reboot to see it removed from the Local Drive Shortcuts in Explorer." But this didnt work for me, onto the next article ..
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<span style="color:#323232;">- It says to go into regedit, Ctrl-F to Find all examples of the string "Creative Cloud Files" until you land on a specific one, which is : HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID{0E270DAA-1BE6-48F2-AC49-36B2E0D3E20C}
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</span><span style="color:#323232;">- Again change "System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree" value from 1 to 0. Rebooted again and no luck
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----- ACTUALLY PROBABLY FUN. Oh hey, wanna do even more and homebrew your own things to appear? Yes, you could rename the whole folder via one of the registry keys - sounds like Adobe’s gonna force that on you anwyay - but maybe you want to homebrew your own?