Windows Explorer Folder View settings

Andy,

Very nice catch. Indeed it is located there by default.

Thank you for providing the correction. That should help Vista remember even better. The tutorial has been updated to reflect this.

Shawn

Shawn,

I found two BagMRU Size at
1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU Size
(which stevencn70 mentioned)
2. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
(which drummer mentioned)

So I have to change both the values to 20000?

niGht kiD,

I would just change the one in the tutorial since it was tested and worked fine. I did a reinstall to locate the default location. It's the one in the tutorial now.

Shawn

Ok. Thanks.

Your welcome.

Hey Brink,

First of all, congratuations on an excellent tutorial. Very thorough. I applaud your generosity in creating it and sharing it with the rest of us. I've been chasing solutions to this problem off and on for several months now, and your tutorial is the most comprehensive one out there!

Unfortunately, it didn't work for me.

I should mention that I'm a VERY experienced user/tinkerer with Windows - all versions, including Vista. I have no problem messing with the registry. I followed ALL of your instructions in the tutorial (just to be sure). I remembered to log off and log on again afterwards.

Then I set about customising my hundreds of folders. It took about an hour. By the time I was finished, the first ones I'd customised had already forgotten their settings. I randomly visited folders to see what the extent of the forgetfulness was, and it appeared to be random. Most folders were fine, but about 10% were forgotten. There didn't appear to be a pattern to it.

I just thought I should let you know.

Thanks again,

Mark.

Hi Mark, It just might be that users who are more experienced, who delve into things, would hit this flaw more often than folks who just use the "desktop" and dont even know there is a "C:" drive.

I thought mine was still breaking also, but I am finding that it seems to just depends on the "path of approach".

I have a folder, for example, Computer\C:\users\[user]\Extra
that I have customized. And it will stay customized as long as I go there to open it. But, if I look at the top of the Explorer folder-tree, "Desktop" and from there open Desktop\[user]\Extra, it opens the "same" folder, but the format customizing that folder is not displayed. For myself, I have just put a a shortcut to Computer\C:\users\[user]\Extra on my Quick-launch bar, and as long as I approach it from there, it is fine...

As Brink mentioned earlier, it seems to be this Junction/Symbolic-Link type of object causing it. I keep planning to run some tests to see if I can find a way get the customizations running in parallel, but for now this "always approach from the west" technique is satisfying me, and there are many other bugs to hunt down.

I would be interested if your lost customizations are shown if you open the folders from above AND below the drive-letter.

Thanks Periboob. I was aware of the nuance of the differing paths to approach a folder. Vista appears to store TWO sets of settings for a folder if there are two "paths" that you can take to get to it.

Unfortunately, my problem is not caused by that. I actually only ever use one "approach" to get to each of my folders.

Sigh.....

Mark (Mvirtue),

Welcome to the forum.

If you set the setings back to what you wanted, does Vista remember them again? If you can remember, do you know at what point or what folder you changed when it forgot your other one? When it forgot your other folder settings, did it replace them with the last one you changed, or was it a random template?

Shawn

Hi Shawn,

Ultimately no. It seems to remember them straight away, but after a while (and I can't define a while - after many visits to other folders), a folder will have changed that I'm certain I set the way I wanted it.

I can't say. I went through the process of changing all my folders, and when I got to the end I went back to the beginning. A few (not all) of the first folders had forgotten their settings. I have no way of knowing at what point those folders forgot their settings.

I didn't notice any pattern. Sometimes it was simple, like "List" being replaced with "Details" (which could have been a very recent change I'd made to another folder), but I also noticed a "Details" view change so that the only column shown was the filename (no date, no size, no type). I NEVER set a view like that manually.

I hope this helps...

(and thanks again)

Mark.