Get rid of SkyDrive Pro from context menu

SkyDrive is a far ancestor of OneDrive. It can appear in your system with the installation of Office 2013, Office 2016 and Office 365. When it is installed, Windows 10 immediately “captures” this situation and replaces it with newer counterpart — OneDrive. Unfortunately, it is not able to purge corresponding context menu items and eventually you’re left with a disabled and not working “SkyDrive Pro” item.

This article shows you the quickest way to correct this problem. You can also use it to perform general clenaup of your context menu as it doesn’t narrow to SkyDrive Pro item only.

This blog post is based on this article, but I’ve added some extensions to it.

To remove “SkyDrive Pro” item from your context menu, follow these steps:

1. Launch Registry Editor.
2. Paste HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shell into address bar and hit Enter to navigate.
3. Right click on SPFS.ContextMenu and select Delete to delete the key.

Changes are reflected immediately (no need to restart system, close Registry Editor or close and reopen File Explorer windows) so you can verify that the item is actually gone by right-clicking on any file in any open File Explorer window.

You can use exactly the same way to remove other entries in AllFilesystemObjects\shell branch.

You can also browser AllFilesystemObjects\shellex branch to review and optionally remove some other context menu items. The only difference is that in this branch most handlers are references by ID which is different per each installation of Windows, so there is no way to point to a particular element. You employ try&check method here.

Since you’re trying to mess with the very core Windows’ Registry Editor, it is always a good idea to export a branch or group of branches you’re about to delete, by right-clicking it and selecting Export item from the context menu. Just, in case…

Keep in mind that a lot of services in Windows 10 uses on-the-fly file handlers that cannot be removed this way (and frankly saying, any other way — the only possible way is to uncheck corresponding option in a configuration section of a program that uses such handler, of course given the fact that such possibility is exposed).

For the above and for many other reasons many entries in shell and shellex branches will be a cluttering garbage and some uncleaned remains of the past and even deleting corresponding item won’t remove given option from file’s context menu.

For example, I have removed item which values suggested that it corresponds to OneDrive, but the annoying item remained in the context menu. The same with an option that was supposed to remove “Pin to Start Menu” item from context menu. Again, all for nothing. Tree branch removed, item remains.