Windows Explorer Auto Arrange - Disable

Dear Brink,

I've tried your bat file on my Windows 7 64-bit OS but, within the folders on my desktop I don't see "auto arrange" visible (to uncheck/disable) under the menu item "view".

I did run your batch file as administrator, no errors were seen, the screen did flicker (as was described that it would), my desktop icons reset their locations.. but I can't disable auto arrange in folders other then the root of my desktop.

Am I missing something?
Is this an issue because I'm running windows 7 64bit?

Thanks for your time.

Wow.. my mistake.

While I've read your article many times, my brain kept seeing the word "enable" and thinking "yeah, we want to enable seeing auto arrange so we can uncheck it" so I kept going to option 2. *facepalm* Yeah that wasn't what I was suppose to do to make this work.

Heh.. on the bright side I can now disable auto arrange for folders on my pc. Thanks Brink! :)

Note: While I haven't found a program that will remember the order icons are arranged within folders, I did find a nice free one that works well for the desktop. I've found it very helpful while working on disabling autoarrange (as I have several icons on my desktop). For those others who might also find such a program helpful I'll list it here:
DesktopOK 3.55 Save and restore the desktop icon positions.

Shawn,

I am forever in your debt! This worked in seconds, like magic.

In the real world (business) that "us" normal people operate, disabling auto arrange is vital.
I was ready to reinstall XP for this reason alone.

Working in the Win 7 folder views, it "was" taking me WEEKS to do what I do in one day.

It is imperative that I arrange files, sometimes side by side (ie: 25 PDF doc's next to excel related docs, but separated from other docs, as that is the group I'm working on). With nearly 10,000 various documents in many different type folders, one MUST group things accordingly.

I can't tell you the incredible amount of time it was taking to hunt and root out files, or even simply keeping a copy of my letterhead in the upper corners with other boiler plate docs etc.

From us Multi tasking business users, THANK YOU!

Hi, I'm new here. I tried both your suggested methods for disabling auto-arrange in the Start Menu. Unchecking the sort box works for about 5 minutes; the reg fix worked overnight, but reverted after a couple of hours this morning.

I appreciate your efforts in this area. Is there a later fix for this hideous problem?

Thanks, Erewhon.

Thanks for fast response. No third party programs installed. I did have Start Menu X for awhile . . . I just gave it another try but uninstalled it when I found I couldn't arrange the items. So I'm giving the reg fix another chance.

My version of Windows 7 is a new installation and I keep it spotlessly clean.

No luck Brink, the fix keeps reverting back to: files first in alphabetical order, then folders in alphabetical order.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks