Windows Explorer problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Roger Van Loon
  • Start date Start date
R

Roger Van Loon

I went from Win31 though Win95, Win ME, and Win XP (by far the best of
all). They did not give me any serious problems (just to say that I am
not an absolute Newbie).
Now I had to buy a new PC with Windows Vista pre-installed and, after
several weeks, I am getting more and more frustrated. The main pain is
Explorer, and I wonder if I should give up, format the drive, and
install my old XP anew. (Re-installing all of my programs etc. is what
keeps me back).
So, here are my first (somewhat desperate) questions:
- Is there any way to get the old tree view back that we are used to
from XP (and former versions)? I do not mind buying some update
(downdate?) if it should be necessary.
- Is there a way to get rid of the shortcuts (virtual folders?) that now
clutter up the tree view in Explorer?
I find it sooo hard to navigate through my hard disk now.
 
Hi, Roger.

Vista is different, but every generation before was different, too. We just
have to climb the learning curve - again. ;^} Windows Explorer is SO
customizable in Vista that we may have to change a LOT of defaults to get
the results we want to see.
- Is there any way to get the old tree view back that we are used to from
XP (and former versions)?
Click to expand...

I THINK what you want is the Navigation Pane. Click on Organize | Layout |
Navigation Pane. This should toggle display of that pane along the right
side of the WE window. To see the contents of an item (drive, folder,
subfolder), click the small triangle in front of the item's folder icon.
(If there's no little triangle, the folder has no subfolders - but you may
need to hover your mouse over the folder name to see the triangle. Or click
Organize | Folder and Search Options | View, and toggle "Display simple
folder view in Navigation pane".)

The Folder and Search Options page has a lot of settings! This is one of
the first places I go after installing Windows or Vista. (It's also
accessible via Control Panel | Folder Options.) This is where I turn on
single-click, show extensions and hidden files, always show menus, and
several other settings that default to fit a newbie, not an experience
Windows user. I can't guess which options you prefer, Roger, but you should
spend some time exploring here. You should be able to make Vista behave
just about the way you like it. ;<)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)
 
R. C. White said:
Hi, Roger.

Vista is different, but every generation before was different, too. We
just have to climb the learning curve - again. ;^}
Click to expand...

The alternative: let MS climb the learning curve and wait for their next
attempt at a usable OS, and in the meantime stick to XP (which IMO is a
usable OS), or replace the Vista Explorer with an alternative file manager
that simply helps you get your work done instead of letting you climb.

Don
 
Many thanks, RC, I really appreciate the help.
Strange: the suggested settings that you make about the Navigation pane
and the folder options were already implemented by me before my post
(we seem to have something in common), so that doesn't help.
As you may have read, it's mainly the virtual folders that make things
difficult for me, is there really no way to turn all of them off?
Can I delete the virtual folders in Explorer without deleting the real
folders that they point to?
I won't go into all of the problems they cause for me, would take too long.
Now, I hope I don't sound like like a crybaby, but you say:
"""""Vista is different, but every generation before was different,
too. We just have to climb the learning curve - again.""""
Well, as I said, I could easily cope with all of the older generations,
but I seriously fear I won't be able to cope with this one.
And, what's the need for always 'climbing the learning curve - again' ?
By far the most customers just want an easy to use, stable, OS (a
somewhat improved XP with no bugs would do fine for me). With minimal
changes from the previous version, except for those improvements.
I have two friends who (on my advice) did buy a PC and took a year of
evening classes learning about Win XP. They now can handle their PC
(somewhat).
I fear the day when their PC might crash and they would have to switch
to Vista (a new year of study? They would throw their PC out of the window)
Roger
 
Donald said:
The alternative: let MS climb the learning curve and wait for their
next attempt at a usable OS, and in the meantime stick to XP (which
IMO is a usable OS), or replace the Vista Explorer with an alternative
file manager that simply helps you get your work done instead of
letting you climb.

Don
Click to expand...
Don,
Thanks for your reply, I wonder: what would you suggest as 'an
alternative file manager' that works under Vista? Perhaps it would solve
many of my problems
By the way, I would love to go back to XP, but I spent weeks getting all
of my programs and settings to run under Vista, (as far as possible),
would have to do all of that all over
Roger
 
Hi, Roger.
As you may have read, it's mainly the virtual folders that make things
difficult for me, is there really no way to turn all of them off?
Click to expand...

I kind of overlooked this line because I seldom use virtual folders - even
though they are there. That is, I seldom click on Documents or Pictures. I
click "Folders", way down at the bottom of the Navigation pane. This
expands into what I think you are looking for. Actually, it expands into a
"superset" of the "directory tree". starting with "Desktop". But few
(maybe several) lines down is "Computer", with a little triangle before it.
Click that triangle to expand Computer into the familiar Drive C:, Drive D:,
etc., with further cascading triangles to see what I think you want. THIS
is the way that I usually navigate. Looks a lot like the tree in RegEdit.
We can widen the pane by dragging it in the usual way.

Is this what you were looking for?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)
 
Hello, RC, thanks for the time you are willing to spend on this.
Yes, I already use mainly the Computer (drive C) view. It does help, but....
Perhaps I should do some more explaning. My old PC was a Dell Dimension
with a 75 GB hard disk, I kept most of my data on an external hard
disk. New one is a Medion PC with a 305 GB C drive, and Vista Home
Premium pre-installed (Dutch version, which I found out only after
buying, sooo stupid of me - I thought the English one would be
self-evident: so sometimes what I write are translations of what I
actually see).
Windows Easy Transfer did not work (different language versions?) so I
had to copy lots of folders and files and it is possible that I made
some errors there.
Anyhow, afterwards I found that much more space on my new C drive was
used up than I expected, and I went to look for the reason, using
Explorer. The more I used it, the more confused I became. To illustrate:
In the old Explorer, I used to select some (all) folders / files in the
right pane and click 'Properties' (it was then simple to see their size).
Now, exploring the C drive, I get the following results:
- When I right-click on the C drive in the left pane, it shows that 146
GB of the available 305 GB is used.
- When I expand that C drive and look at its contents in the right pane
(selecting all and clicking 'properties'), I see that the used size is
192 GB.
- In the right pane there is a map 'documents and settings' which seems
to act as a shortcut (upward pointing arrow). When I de-select that, the
rest show a size of 136 GB.
- The 'contents' of this shortcut seem identical to the map 'users'
which has a size of 55,6 GB (how do I get rid of that shortcut, not the
contents? Is it safe to delete it?)
- Another detail: in this view, the recycle bin has a size of 14 GB,
but it is empty. How can this be?
One last thing: in my former posts, I may have confused 'virtual
folders' with 'folders acting like shortcuts'.
Thanks again for any help.
Roger.
 
R. C. White wrote:
[snip]
The Folder and Search Options page has a lot of settings! This is one
of the first places I go after installing Windows or Vista. (It's also
accessible via Control Panel | Folder Options.) [snip]
RC
Click to expand...

Thank you! Finally, I can make that search bar find file names...
 
Hi, Roger.

Sorry I wasn't able to take time to answer over the weekend. I don't have
answers to all your questions, but maybe I can help with a couple of them.
(Like most Americans, sadly, I'm mono-lingual, so I'm glad you're
translating from Dutch for me.)
Windows Easy Transfer did not work (different language versions?) so I had
to copy lots of folders and files and it is possible that I made some
errors there.
Click to expand...

WET didn't work well for me, either. I'm just glad that I only had to copy
between hard drives in a single computer! But I had hard drive problems
during the Vista beta and wound up doing a lot of file copying. Thank
goodness for good ol' Xcopy.exe!
- When I right-click on the C drive in the left pane, it shows that 146 GB
of the available 305 GB is used.
- When I expand that C drive and look at its contents in the right pane
(selecting all and clicking 'properties'), I see that the used size is 192
GB.
Click to expand...

Some of this is the disparity between actual file sizes and what is
sometimes referred to as "size on disk". A single one-byte file uses a
whole cluster ("allocation unit"), which is 4 KB, by default. So 1,000
one-byte files total only 1 KB of actual data but would take 1,000 KB (1 MB)
on the disk. That's an oversimplification, of course, just to illustrate
how the effect can multiply.

Also, there are hidden files, such as pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys, each of
which can be about as big as your installed RAM. Then there are Restore
Points and other files that gobble up space but are not normally visible.
- In the right pane there is a map 'documents and settings' which seems to
act as a shortcut (upward pointing arrow). When I de-select that, the rest
show a size of 136 GB.
- The 'contents' of this shortcut seem identical to the map 'users' which
has a size of 55,6 GB (how do I get rid of that shortcut, not the
contents? Is it safe to delete it?)
Click to expand...

In Vista, "Documents and Settings" does not actually exist. That is, there
is no such folder. The listing is a "Junction", sort of like a shortcut,
that points to the corresponding folder, depending on which User is logged
on. In your case, it might point to C:\User\Roger\Documents - or to another
folder, such as Pictures. The "junctions" are there only so that older
applications will work, even before they are updated to the Vista scheme.
No, you can't delete it. But it doesn't really take up any additional
space; the display is just showing you the same space usage that you are
seeing in the "Users" tree.
One last thing: in my former posts, I may have confused 'virtual folders'
with 'folders acting like shortcuts'.
Click to expand...

As I said, I don't use virtual folders, but they probably will become very
useful when I've learned to use them. As I understand it, they are not real
folders, but hold pointers to many other folders. For example, my
"Pictures" virtual folder might list photos that actually are in
C:\Users\RC\Pictures AND others that are in M:\Photoshop Elements\Catalogs
AND in E:\Nikon\Digital Camera Pix AND in other locations in my computer.
By using the virtual folder, I don't have to know where the photos are
stored; just click Pictures and there they are! ;<)

I'm glad to see that you got a free program that solves many of your
problems. I expect that we will all become happier with Vista as we work
with it more and learn how to use its many still-mysterious new features.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)
 
Whoops!
Some of this is the disparity between actual file sizes and what is
sometimes referred to as "size on disk". A single one-byte file uses a
whole cluster ("allocation unit"), which is 4 KB, by default. So 1,000
one-byte files total only 1 KB of actual data but would take 1,000 KB (1
MB) on the disk. That's an oversimplification, of course, just to
illustrate how the effect can multiply.
Click to expand...

Lousy arithmetic! And from an accountant, no less! :^{

A thousand 4 KB files would use 4,000 KB (4 MB) - not 1 MB.

Sorry 'bout that!

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)
 
R. C. White said:
Hi, Roger.

Sorry I wasn't able to take time to answer over the weekend. I don't
have answers to all your questions, but maybe I can help with a couple
of them. (Like most Americans, sadly, I'm mono-lingual, so I'm glad
you're translating from Dutch for me.)


WET didn't work well for me, either. I'm just glad that I only had to
copy between hard drives in a single computer! But I had hard drive
problems during the Vista beta and wound up doing a lot of file
copying. Thank goodness for good ol' Xcopy.exe!


Some of this is the disparity between actual file sizes and what is
sometimes referred to as "size on disk". A single one-byte file uses
a whole cluster ("allocation unit"), which is 4 KB, by default. So
1,000 one-byte files total only 1 KB of actual data but would take
1,000 KB (1 MB) on the disk. That's an oversimplification, of course,
just to illustrate how the effect can multiply.

Also, there are hidden files, such as pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys,
each of which can be about as big as your installed RAM. Then there
are Restore Points and other files that gobble up space but are not
normally visible.


In Vista, "Documents and Settings" does not actually exist. That is,
there is no such folder. The listing is a "Junction", sort of like a
shortcut, that points to the corresponding folder, depending on which
User is logged on. In your case, it might point to
C:\User\Roger\Documents - or to another folder, such as Pictures. The
"junctions" are there only so that older applications will work, even
before they are updated to the Vista scheme. No, you can't delete it.
But it doesn't really take up any additional space; the display is
just showing you the same space usage that you are seeing in the
"Users" tree.


As I said, I don't use virtual folders, but they probably will become
very useful when I've learned to use them. As I understand it, they
are not real folders, but hold pointers to many other folders. For
example, my "Pictures" virtual folder might list photos that actually
are in C:\Users\RC\Pictures AND others that are in M:\Photoshop
Elements\Catalogs AND in E:\Nikon\Digital Camera Pix AND in other
locations in my computer. By using the virtual folder, I don't have to
know where the photos are stored; just click Pictures and there they
are! ;<)

I'm glad to see that you got a free program that solves many of your
problems. I expect that we will all become happier with Vista as we
work with it more and learn how to use its many still-mysterious new
features.

RC
Click to expand...
Hello RC,
I'm really thankful for your explanations, many things are much clearer
for me now. Yes, I suppose we all will have to study Vista -
nevertheless, I wonder if it will ever become as efficient as the good
old XP. Nevertheless, I suppose we can't turn back Microsoft's clock.....
Thanks again for your time and efforts.
Roger.
 
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