There's a 'feature' of the common dialogue open and save windows that remembers the last path you used even after re-starting the
parent application, I need to be able to disable this feature.
Whilst this is a quite handy feature most of the time, we tend to open a lot of files over many networked machines that don't stay
on the network for very long (they get built and tested here then shipped off after a few days) so it's quite often the case that
the previous path is on a machine that's not even plugged in any more. In these cases Windows still tries to contact these machines
and can take anywhere between 1 and 3 minutes to eventually time out and bring up the dialogue with a default path.
These machines are all on the local area network so even setting the timeout to something quite small, say 10 seconds, would be
better than nothing but ideally I'd just like to disable this feature altogether, any ideas?
Cheers,

Mike

P.s. Sorry if this is on the wrong group(s), if there's a more appropriate group then please let me know.


- Microsoft Visual Basic MVP -
E-Mail: (E-Mail Removed)
WWW: Http://www.mvps.org/EDais/

I am not aware of any way to disable the history feature for common dialog
boxes.

However, the history can be "erased", typically with one of many "evidence
eliminator" third party tools. Search the Internet for "erase evidence" for
several examples. I found one at http://www.softheap.com/evremove.html.

-Reed
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

| "Mike D Sutton @ Work" <(E-Mail Removed)>
| wrote in message news:(E-Mail Removed)...
| There's a 'feature' of the common dialogue open and save
| windows that remembers the last path you used even after
| re-starting the parent application, I need to be able to
| disable this feature. Whilst this is a quite handy feature most
| of the time, we tend to open a lot of files over many networked
| machines that don't stay on the network for very long <SNIP>

There is a Group Policy that can be Enabled that "Removes the
list of most recently used files from the Open dialog box."

A quote from the following resource about the policy:

Microsoft Download Center:
"Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows Server 2003"
http://microsoft.com/downloads/detai...displaylang=en

"Removes the list of most recently used files from the Open
dialog box. If you disable this setting or do not configure it,
the File name field includes a drop-down list of recently used
files. If you enable this setting, the File name field is a
simple text box. Users must browse directories to find a file or
type a file name in the text box. This setting, and others in
this folder, lets you remove new features added in Windows 2000
Professional, so that the Open dialog box looks like it did in
Windows NT 4.0 and earlier. These policies only affect programs
that use the standard Open dialog box provided to developers of
Windows programs. To see an example of the standard Open dialog
box, start Notepad and, on the File menu, click Open. Note: It
is a requirement for third-party applications with Windows 2000
or later certification to adhere to this setting."

You can find links to peer-to-peer support newsgroups for Group
Policy and Active Directory technologies below.

Management Technologies Newsgroups
Newsgroup: microsoft.public.windows.group_policy
AKA: Windows: Group Policy
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...t/default.mspx

Directory Services Newsgroups
Newsgroup: microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory
AKA: Windows Server Active Directory
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...s/default.mspx

Note that the above web pages are sub-pages of the Microsoft
Windows Server 2003 Community Web Page. It is an excellent
"Portal" Web Page you may want to add to your Favorites:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Community Portal Web Page
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...y/default.mspx