MSDN Magazine: Customising the Places Bar in File Dialogs

This excellent article describes how the places bar on the left-hand side of the File Common Dialogs is populated and then demonstrates how to use the little-known Windows RegOverridePredefKey API function to allow you to customise it on a per-application basis. Code is provided for C# but doesn't look difficult to adapt to VB or VB.NET.

Link

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/03/CuttingEdge/default.aspx