getting win7 to not "customize" folders

Greetings all

I am more and more convinced that the happy programmers at
Microsoft do not use Windows to accomplish anything non-trivial. That
is to say they work _on_ windows, but do not work _in_ windows.

Today's rant is about folders which show the track number, title,
artist, album, and recording date, for files which are not music files
but everything else. I'll reset them to "Documents" or "General" -
and the next time I'm back, it has reverted to "Music".
Is there a way to keep Windows from resetting folder
customizations to "Music" when my back is turned?

Goggling this gives me many options to make a registry edit, but I
am hoping that there is a less techno-geek method. Of course, this
being Microsoft, the idea that users might not want a technogeek
method might not occur to them.

tschus
pyotr
--
pyotr filipivich
The question was asked: "Is Hindsight overrated?"
In retrospect, it appears to be.

pyotr filipivich wrote:

Today's rant is about folders which show the track number, title,
artist, album, and recording date, for files which are not music
files but everything else. I'll reset them to "Documents" or
"General" - and the next time I'm back, it has reverted to "Music".

Is there a way to keep Windows from resetting folder customizations to
"Music" when my back is turned?

Did you configure Windows Explorer to show all files (system, hidden,
and protected)? If so, the desktop.ini file will show. That means you
might accidentally select it when selecting a range or all files to
include in a delete action. If you delete the desktop.ini file then you
delete the customizations for that folder. Then Windows will pick a
folder type based on its location or contents. After customizing a
folder, make sure not to delete the desktop.ini that defines that
customization.

"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| Today's rant is about folders which show the track number, title,
| artist, album, and recording date, for files which are not music files
| but everything else. I'll reset them to "Documents" or "General" -
| and the next time I'm back, it has reverted to "Music".

You can look at this:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/nt6fix.php5#folfix

I wrote it to make win7 behave, but I haven't looked
at it for awhile.

In XP nothing behaves but folder can be set on
a per-folder basis if you know how to repair the
settings that Explorer saves wrongly.

On 7 a surprising number of things were changed,
for no apparent reason. It no longer works to set
by-folder but it does work to delete old settings
and customize on an all-folders basis. I think the
trick is to stop "folder sniffing".

If you don't want to take a chance on someone
else's utility, you can look at the code (VBScript)
and do your own edits based on that.

VanguardLH on Wed, 1 Nov 2017 16:14:39 -0500 typed in
alt.windows7.general the following:
pyotr filipivich wrote:

Today's rant is about folders which show the track number, title,
artist, album, and recording date, for files which are not music
files but everything else. I'll reset them to "Documents" or
"General" - and the next time I'm back, it has reverted to "Music".

Is there a way to keep Windows from resetting folder customizations to
"Music" when my back is turned?

Did you configure Windows Explorer to show all files (system, hidden,
and protected)? If so, the desktop.ini file will show. That means you
might accidentally select it when selecting a range or all files to
include in a delete action. If you delete the desktop.ini file then you
delete the customizations for that folder. Then Windows will pick a
folder type based on its location or contents. After customizing a
folder, make sure not to delete the desktop.ini that defines that
customization.

Hmm - I do have the "show all files" option checked.
But no, haven't deleted a desktop.ini except when deleting all
files in a directory.

--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"Mayayana" on Wed, 1 Nov 2017 17:59:08 -0400
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| Today's rant is about folders which show the track number, title,
| artist, album, and recording date, for files which are not music files
| but everything else. I'll reset them to "Documents" or "General" -
| and the next time I'm back, it has reverted to "Music".

You can look at this:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/nt6fix.php5#folfix

I wrote it to make win7 behave, but I haven't looked
at it for awhile.

In XP nothing behaves but folder can be set on
a per-folder basis if you know how to repair the
settings that Explorer saves wrongly.

On 7 a surprising number of things were changed,

They keep "improving" things which worked to the point they don't
work any more. Or now work in such a manner as to interrupt the
workflow one used to have.

for no apparent reason. It no longer works to set
by-folder but it does work to delete old settings
and customize on an all-folders basis. I think the
trick is to stop "folder sniffing".

If you don't want to take a chance on someone
else's utility, you can look at the code (VBScript)
and do your own edits based on that.


--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| On 7 a surprising number of things were changed,
|
| They keep "improving" things which worked to the point they don't
| work any more. Or now work in such a manner as to interrupt the
| workflow one used to have.
|

Yes. I think there's a tendency to over-analyze
"dummy functions": You can't understand file types,
so Windows should decide how to display them on
a per-folder basis. Which of course assumes you
have all your music in one folder, all your photos
in another, and all your docs in a third.... Which is
odd, since we've already established that you
can't tell the difference.

Then again, you shouldn't really be trying to
understand files. Programs should save photos in
MyPictures without asking and look in MyPictures
when you want to find an image file.

They keep dumbing it down while raising the
bar in terms of understanding things. So now people
need something like Picasa or other dummy "asset
management" software in order to find their files
at all. Eventually I'm sure there'll be an asset
manager manager, so that you can find the thing
that finds the thing that finds your files. Sort of
like a quick guide to an index book for your file
cabinets.

It would be OK if they provided settings for these
things, but undoing the protocols they decide on
usually requires top-secret tweaks when it should
only require unchecking a box.

I still haven't solved the flurry of popups when
I put in a USB stick. I managed to get rid of all but
one. I don't even remember now what it says.
They're all idiotic:

"This should be scanned."
"How do you want to view the files."
"Warning Will Robinson! Unsafe storage intruder!"
"New disk needs to be formatted!"

But there's also a less obvious, more insidious
reason for changing things. The Microsofties are
control freaks. They don't simply document the
platform. There are levels of insider status. They
want to control how it's used.

If you read the script I linked and
compare it to the XP version I wrote, you'll see
that it's almost the same, but MS made little
changes here and there. They broke some things
and fixed others.

The old system was broken ever since
Win98. But actually it's worse than that. The old
system worked, but Explorer's application of it was
broken. Explorer never recorded settings in the
Registry properly. As a result Explorer rejected it's
own settings when a folder was opened! That's
why it never remembered when you saved window
size. And the settings themselves are an absurdly
complex parody of API parameter names used in
creating and managing windows onscreen.

(Some of them come from the WINDOWPLACEMENT
structure, for instance:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...=vs.85%29.aspx

That was apparently just a handy reference to mix
some obfuscation into the settings.
)

Microsoft just sort of shuffled the cards with the
Win7 system. It looks the same but doesn't work the
same way. Thus, anyone who tried to fix folders on
XP was foiled on Vista/7.

They break this stuff systematically because they
don't like people using undocumented functionality.
If a function is an official API function then Microsoft
will maintain compatibility in a very dependable way
-- for decades. (Apple, by contrast, are likely to break
it all next year.) But with undocumented functions the
Softies like to throw a wrench in the works. Example:
When ME came out I was using an undocumented Choose
Icon browsing window in one of my programs. That was
one of the things they broke from 98 - ME. You know
how you get a "Choose Icon" window when you want
to change a system icon? Lots of people were using that.
But it wasn't official. So MS made a slight change so that
everyone's software would break. "We warned you not to
use unofficial stuff!"

"Mayayana" on Thu, 2 Nov 2017 09:22:12 -0400
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:

But there's also a less obvious, more insidious
reason for changing things. The Microsofties are
control freaks. They don't simply document the
platform. There are levels of insider status. They
want to control how it's used.

I've adopted the perspective that they are "geeks|Aspers" who keep
coming up with a "better" way to do the program. But they don't grasp
that as much as they do not like it when their routines are disrupted,
they are doing just that to us "on the outside" who do not like it
when our routines are disrupted. Only we can't rewrite the code to
make it work the Right Way Again.


--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

On 2017-11-01 12:23, pyotr filipivich wrote:

Greetings all

I am more and more convinced that the happy programmers at
Microsoft do not use Windows to accomplish anything non-trivial. That
is to say they work _on_ windows, but do not work _in_ windows.

Today's rant is about folders which show the track number, title,
artist, album, and recording date, for files which are not music files
but everything else. I'll reset them to "Documents" or "General" -
and the next time I'm back, it has reverted to "Music".
Is there a way to keep Windows from resetting folder
customizations to "Music" when my back is turned?

If you customize a folder, the datatype is saved in desktop.ini and
should be remembered/re-read so long as the folder is read-only
(customizing the folder makes it read-only). If you want to disable
completely this auto-folder-type-detection, you can do this:

REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Classes\Local
Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\All Folders\Shell" /V
FolderType /T REG_SZ /D NotSpecified /F

This will make all folders "General." To undo, run this:

REG DELETE "HKCU\Software\Classes\Local
Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\All Folders\Shell" /V
FolderType /F

You need to reboot each time you change this. See
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...e-default.html

Best Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Memberavid-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/SPCA/Planetary-Society
oO-( )-Oo Ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?