How To Disable or Enable the Homegroup Feature in Windows 7

Have you ever used the Homegroup feature in Windows 7? It’s a great way to share files and printers with all your Windows 7 computers, but if you don’t want it anymore, you can disable or enable the feature easily.

Before you bother disabling it, you should make sure to check out our articles explaining how it works, and why it’s great:

• Use the Homegroup Feature in Windows 7 to Share Printers and Files
• How To Disconnect a Machine from a Homegroup
• Learning Windows 7: Create a Homegroup & Join a New Computer To It
• Change Which Files are Shared in a Homegroup in Windows 7

Still not convinced? Keep reading.

Disable the Homegroup Feature in Windows 7

The first thing you’ll want to do is open up Windows Explorer, right-click on the Homegroup option in the left-hand pane, and then choose Change HomeGroup settings.

At the bottom of the window, you’ll find an option called “Leave the homegroup”, which you should click.

Now you’ll be presented with a wizard asking you to confirm that you really want to leave the homegroup.

This disables the homegroup, but doesn’t remove it from the navigation pane.

Remove Homegroup from the Navigation Pane

Next, you’ll want to open up services.msc in the start menu search box, or just find it through Control Panel. Find HomeGroup Listener in the list, and double-click on it.

Change the Startup type to Disabled, and click the Stop button to stop the service. Once you’re done with that, you’ll need to disable the Homegroup Provider service in the same way.

At this point you’ll notice that it’s gone from the navigation pane.

Again, we recommend you learn how the feature works, but if you don’t want to, it’s pretty easy to disable, right?

How to Enable Homegroups Again

First, you’ll want to enable the service again—head back into services.msc, find the HomeGroup Listener and set it to automatic. Next, head into Control Panel –> Network and Internet, and then click on HomeGroup.

Then, simply click on the Create a Homegroup button, and follow the prompts. If your button says Join a homegroup, follow that wizard instead.

Do you use the Homegroup feature?