Windows Explorer Auto Arrange - Disable

still a puzzle as to why it wasn't showing as i was only setting up the folder views with large icons and clicking the apply to folders in folder options, whatever it was it works so im happy,

@Mooly
Not exactly sure what boohbah did but I think the problem with you at least is Computer is not opening faster enough before the reg entries are entered. If I'm correct then editing the batch file should help.

Right click the bat file and click edit, find the line "explorer.exe shell:MyComputerFolder" and on the next line type "TIMEOUT 10" (without quotes). This will wait another 10 seconds for Computer to open but you may only need a couple so when the Computer window opens press any key to continue if it's still counting down.

If this doesn't help post back and boobah should be able to explain what he did.

For others.
If you want the black bar that boobah was referring too to show as default for all folders and lose the ability to arrange the folders in any position in all folders then edit the bat file and replace all occurrences of "/D 1124073476" with "/D 1124073473".

I'm 99% sure this was the original setting before the change was made and works under my quick test, boohbah should be able to confirm this.

No problem.

Thank you Dustin. I added a 5 second timeout to the BAT file for that to help make sure that it Computer opens before the registry entries are made. :)

While using Extra Large Icons, Large Icons, Medium Icons, Small Icons, and Extended Tiles folder views, you can click on View (Menu bar) and check Auto arrange to have the black indicator line back inbetween files/folders when arranging files/folders in any order. This turns off the ability to arrange files/folders by random positions though.

That's great, thanks you two.

Shawn... showing my total lack of expertise here.

What would happen if you took (exported) the reg keys for explorer from a Vista PC and imported or merged them to a W7 installation. Is that kind of experimentation possible. It would be great to have the exact same folder handling that Vista provides.

Hello Mooly,

That would not be recommended since Vista does not have libraries like Windows 7 does. They may not work properly in Windows 7 and cause unknown issues.

If you wish to give it a play with, be sure to create a restore point first so that you could do a system restore if it messed things up. :)

Mooly said:

Hmmm... well I just might have a play at some future point.

It would all be done on what is now a "spare" old Vista laptop (that I have Acronis images of anyway ) so there is nothing to lose in that sense. In fact I have W7 on it now which is what I was playing with trying all this folder stuff out and which I installed using the recovery media ( a full W7 SP1 disc) supplied with the new PC and didn't activate or update it of course.

I just wondered whether it was all a waste of time trying to use registry keys from another OS but maybe not... who knows :)

Please let us know how it went if you give it a play. :)