Windows 7 - Remove Navigation Pane from some folder views?

Hi All!

Growing quite frustrated trying to remove the Navigation Pane from some, but not all, folder views.

I'm old fashioned and like to launch programs by clicking on icons on the desktop. I know there are "better" , newer ways to accomplish this, but each of us is an expert on what we want. I've already heard all the arguments about just "relaxing" to the new Windows 7 paradigm, enjoy the "new car smell" ,etc. and I reject them, so please don't reiterate them again.

I also like an uncluttered desktop. My solution since way back in the Win2K days has been to create folders on the desktop with names appropriate to the icons they contain. In XP I could customize each folder's view to have no URL bar, no menus, no toolbars - in other words, just a "box" that held icons. This customization did not effect other explorer.exe windows (typically popped-up via the Windows-e key combo) which would have the full URL bar, menus, navigation pane on the left, etc.

In Windows 7, it seems as if any settings that I apply to an individual folder view apply to all explorer.exe windows. I've already tried the various folder types such as pictures, general, etc. , but no matter what I do, if I remove the Navigation pane from a folder, it removes it from all.

I'm willing to hack as deeply as needed to correct this annoying behavior. I've already spent (wasted?) a full man-day (24 hours in front of the computer over a period of 6 days) struggling with this, so I decided to ask for help.

Thanks!

Rarrgh

Hi Again;

Man, this is really driving me nuts! I just can't bring myself to belive that the designers of Windows 7 would provide no mechanism for customizing an individual folder view. It seems insane to presume that the view for one folder would be "perfect" for all folders. If it really is designed this way it represents a huge FAIL.

Any insight at all would be most welcome.

Raargh

Sorry but I think you have to live with it unless someone makes an app that will do what you ask.

I don't know if this might help,. but it'd wroth a try..

I pinned the Start Menu to the Quick Launch bar that I resurrected from Vista.

Thanks, Grim and Reghacker.

While I continue to research, I've installed Fences, which is actually pretty nice.

But, this has become a crusade for me. Over the years, as Windows progressed from V 2.0 (yes I'm old ) to V 7, MS's arrogant "we know best" attitude has been a constant annoyance. For them to abandon something that worked well in previous versions, that IT pro's have come to rely on, is flabbergasting.

Another example is the missing "up one level" button. Sez MS: " The breadcrumb is better, just use that" - but why force us to use ONLY the breadcrumbs? It is NOT always better, and telling us to use Alt-uparrow is just another example of arrogance. It's things like this that caused me to stick with XP until now (proud to report that none of the ~ 30,000 desktops over which I have influence run Vista). I've finally bit the bullet and installed Windows 7 into a second drive on a test machine. One reason I did was the reports of fabulous stability. But - hah - within 1/2 hour of the install I got my first explorer crash - this on Jan 2009 hardware that was Vista Certified and has has run XP flawlessly for 6 months, and is running the latest Windows 7 versions of all critical drivers, Windows updates, BIOS, etc. ! I can make it crash pretty much anytime I want - just right-click on the Desktop after it has been up for a while, and about 25% of the time the crash will happen.



I've been ignoring the crashes, but that's just one of many frustrations. I had really looked forward to Aero - not really needed to get my work done, but it looked slick and cool. BUT - no matter what I've tried, I can't get any Aero theme to allow me to set the background for explorer windows to anything but horrible, glaring white. My eyes cannot take that, so I've been forced to revert to the Classic theme, where it is easy to set the background to any color desired. On this and other forums the consensus is "sorry - most people like white backgrounds, just live with it." AAAARGH.

Oh, well, sorry to vent. Just disappointed - I had so very much wanted to like Windows 7. Now it's just another item in my daily set of problems I have to solve. Life in IT changes but stays the same ...

Call it instinct, but I just *know* there is an obscure registry setting that will allow a particular Explorer window to retain it's customization. I'm not giving up.

Raargh