Move the address bar below the menu bar in Windows Explorer

Actually I did think about that, if only we knew just what caused that. I think it might be in ExplorerFrame.dll, but I don't know where.

I tried several replacements and no replacement is even close to the standard Explorer.

But there is one, very promising, the Explorer_new from Reactos. They aim at per-pixel, exact similarity to the WinXP's Exprorer.

Thanks, but I would prefer to do this with the native Windows Explorer. I wish I knew what I would need to modify. I just feel like there must be some data in a DLL that the classic theme uses for the address bar. Anyone have any ideas?

In Explorer++ you cannot disable tabs

It cannot open new folders in new windows

It does not have the 3D frame (similarly to Win7/Vista garbage)

You cannot remove "Explorer++" from the windows caption.

It is English-only

Well as I said earlier, I want to figure it out in the native explorer. The reason I mentioned explorerframe.dll is because the link Anix posted earlier said that problem occurs with a bad explorerframe.dll file. I don't know if that's actually it, but that's where I'd look at least. I'm also thinking it could be in shell32.dll, but I don't know where it would be in there.

Once I also had the Address Bar disappeared in all Windows Explorer windows. This happened when I was switching themes. That time I switched to a Luna theme variant but Unsigned Themes service seemed not to work so I ended up in unthemed desktop with Luna colors and no address bar. But any attempts to reproduce this failed: in all other attempts of doing the same the Address bar was in place.

Well there was one time I got it to disappear with the Windows Classic theme on my aunt's computer when I was doing some work for her, but it was only on one explorer window, and I don't even know how to reproduce that effect.

If you're using themes, it is possible to hide it by editing an msstyles file (see earlier in this thread if you haven't already) but I still can't figure out how to do it with the classic theme.

I wish I knew what file is responsible for creating the layout of an explorer window using the classic theme, but I don't know where to look. It's been a long time now, and I still can't find it. I kind of suspect it's in UIFILE resource 40960 in ExplorerFrame.dll, but I'm not even completely sure about that or even where it would be in that UIFILE.

Now UIFILE 40960 is quite unorganized in Windows 7 by default, but I found a fixed version that would be easier to modify: https://gist.github.com/EvanPurkhiser/4170905

If anyone would like to look for it in there, feel free. If it's not in there, my second guess would probably be shell32.dll, but again I don't know for sure.

Well I did some testing, and I can confirm that it is NOT in UIFILE 40960. That seems to be exclusively for icon sizes with auto arranging enabled.

What I did was I disabled auto arranging (see here for more info: Windows Explorer Auto Arrange - Disable) and I actually tried deleting the resource UIFILE 40960. After doing that, special folders (such as Computer and the user folder) would not open due to the fact that auto arranging was still enabled in those folders for some reason.

But that's aside from the point. The point is that the folders that had auto arranging disabled opened properly with the address bar still intact. The reason I had thought it might be in ExplorerFrame.dll was because UIFILE 20482 is actually what styles the search bar, and deleting that resource will remove the search bar altogether.

So I guess that means I'll have to start looking elsewhere. If anyone reading this knows where it could be, please let me know. And if anyone would like to start looking themselves, that would be great too (I'll still keep searching).

One minor thing that may or may not be relevant: in an msstyles file, the address bar is refereed to as the 'rebar'. I don't know if that's what it's refereed to with the classic theme, but I'd keep my eye out for anything called 'rebar' in whatever resource. It actually exists in shellstyle.dll, but I can't seem to do anything with it in there. I might experiment with that, even though that's probably not it.