Folder views randomly changing

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark Bourne
  • Start date Start date
Mark said:
Keith said:
As for over-zealous content-sniffing (forcing the Pictures template on
a folder), you can kill that with the following regedit. It will
override autosense & set the template for any folder without a saved
view as 'All Items'.

Copy the text between the lines below into notepad & save as a .reg file.
Watch out for line wrap -- [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\...\Shell] is all one line,
there is a space between 'Local' and 'Settings'.

--------------------------------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local
Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell]
"FolderType"="NotSpecified"

--------------------------------------------------

Merging the .reg file will set the 'All Items' template for any
folders that
don't currently have a view saved with a different template. You can
clear
all saved views by deleting the

"HKCU\Software\Classes\Local
Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags"

key BEFORE merging the .reg file. If any folders open with a different
template after clearing the 'Bags' key & merging the .reg file, they most
likely have a template specified via their desktop.ini file.
Click to expand...

I deleted the "...\Shell\Bags" key, and then set FolderType=NotSpecified
for AllFolders (as above). This does seem to have stopped the content
detection choosing a template for folders. I then set one of the "All
Items" folders up as I wanted it to appear (details view), and applied
to all other folders of that type.

One particular folder (C:\Users\Mark\Documents\Uni\Year4) was fine
yesterday, in details view. Today I went to that folder, through exactly
the same sequence as yesterday (so no problems with navigating from
Desktop vs Computer) and it was in Tiles view, grouped by type. It was
still an "All Items" folder, so the folder type hadn't changed (I never
put my Documents back to the Documents template after modifying the
registry, since I don't want them to have a different view).

So the views still seem to be liable to change apparently at random...
Click to expand...

I've just discovered that whatever view I set up for "Computer" also
gets applied to "C:\Users\Mark\Documents\Uni\Year4" for some reason. I
change the view of "Computer", close the window, open
"C:\Users\Mark\Documents\Uni\Year4", and it has the view I just set for
"Computer". It also happens the other way round - if I change the view
of "C:\Users\Mark\Documents\Uni\Year4", the same view is applied to
"Computer". I don't tell it to apply that view to any other folders, it
just does it! Possibly there are other pairs of folders affected in this
way, but I haven't found them yet. So maybe this isn't quite as random
as it originally seemed...

To me, this seems like there's a bug in the mapping between the registry
keys under "...\Shell\Bags" and the actual folders. Is there some way to
report this? I have an OEM version of Vista, so no technical support
from Microsoft.
 
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