Mark Bourne

Mark Bourne wrote:
> Keith Miller MVP wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>>
>
> 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...

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.