NOTE: I’m running Windows 10, with no intention of uprgrading to 11 until 10 is phased out. YMMV. Also note that in order to see your changes on the Pane, you will have to refresh, close all instances of Windows Explorer, or restart. Usually refresh or close will be all you need.
I’ve been organizing my files and found that I was using Quick Access a lot, and barely ever using my User/Music folder. I’ve never used the 3D Objects folder. Basically, there were some things to clean up from This PC that was taking up precious space on my Windows Explorer Navigation Pane. But, you can’t remove those entries directly. Turns out, you have to cut them from the registry. I take no responsibility for damage done to your OS, but I found this useful. Simply go to your registry and remove desired keys from the 32 and 64 bit NameSpace folders. There are also some extra keys similarly named, which I believe are associated with mount points (hard drives, etc). Removing them seems not to damage anything, but I kept track of them and put them back in once I was done mapping the keys, just in case. I don’t recommend removing them.
64 Bit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace
32 Bit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace
Key Name Mappings
3D Objects
{0DB7E03F-FC29-4DC6-9020-FF41B59E513A}
Downloads
{088e3905-0323-4b02-9826-5d99428e115f}
Pictures
{24ad3ad4-a569-4530-98e1-ab02f9417aa8}
Music
{3dfdf296-dbec-4fb4-81d1-6a3438bcf4de}
Desktop
{B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641}
Documents
{d3162b92-9365-467a-956b-92703aca08af}
Videos
{f86fa3ab-70d2-4fc7-9c99-fcbf05467f3a}
I figured no one really used 3D Objects, so there was probably an article showing how to remove it. There was. From there it was a simple matter of trial and error to match these static keys with folders dissapearing from This PC.