Folder Options Templates Problem

[LEE]

I cannot get the Folder Option Templates to work in XP. I have reset all
folders which reverts all folders to "document template". I then right
click on a folder, select properties, select customize then select
music. I then select and arrange the columns the way I want them for
this template. When I change another folder to the music template the
columns do not change. No matter what template I chooose the columns
never change. Am I missing something? Isn't this what the templates are
suppose to be for? I am using XP Pro. Is there a free utility I can use
to setup the folder columns instead of having to manually change them in
every music folder I have (which are hundreds).

Thanx

 

[Mayayana]

I know how you can adjust all folders of a type,
but I don't know if there's software available.

I've never used any of the templates, as I like all
folders to show small icons. So I'm not sure whether
what you're seeing is typical or not. I do know that
the whole folder customizing functionality is buggy
and malfunctioning in XP. And the option to make all
folders display like the current folder only applies to
the view type.

The way it all works is that when you open a folder
it gets recorded here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\Bags\

The key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU\

is an index to the Bags keys. When a folder is opened the path is
recorded in a binary value under the BagMRU key, with a NodeSlot
value that points to a subkey of Bags. The subkeys of Bags are
numbered, with each having a Shell subkey. The Shell key records
folder settings for that specific folder. But there's a giant bug that
Microsoft never bothered to fix: Explorer can read the settings
from the Shell key, but it doesn't because it didn't record them
properly in the first place!

You would need to write software or a script to do this job.
If you're interested, see here:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/xpfix.php5#folfix

It's a script utility that I wrote to fix all folder windows
and make Explorer remember. It doesn't do exactly what
you want, but it could be adapted -- and there's enough
explanation in the download to work it out. First you'd need
to use something like Regmon to watch the Registry while
you set up a music folder the way you like it. You'd need to
identify the number of the key under Bags that corresponds
to that folder. Then open the Registry and look at the Shell
subkey for that key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\Bags\#\Shell\

where # is the number of the key for the folder you've
just adjusted.


Under the Shell key you need to get (at least) the
values for:

FolderType
ColInfo
Mode
Vid
FFlags
WFlags
WinPos*

You would then need to copy those values to all other
Shell subkeys with the same FolderType value. If you use
the same settings for other keys you should get the same
columns. Some settings determine the folder view details
(like ColInfo) while others are required for Explorer to pay
attention in the first place.

I'm sorry this is so complex. It might not be a realistic
undertaking. But I don't know of any other way, and since
no one has offered an easier solution, this may be the only
option.

--
|I cannot get the Folder Option Templates to work in XP. I have reset all
| folders which reverts all folders to "document template". I then right
| click on a folder, select properties, select customize then select
| music. I then select and arrange the columns the way I want them for
| this template. When I change another folder to the music template the
| columns do not change. No matter what template I chooose the columns
| never change. Am I missing something? Isn't this what the templates are
| suppose to be for? I am using XP Pro. Is there a free utility I can use
| to setup the folder columns instead of having to manually change them in
| every music folder I have (which are hundreds).
|
| Thanx

 

[Tim Meddick]

Windows XP - it has to be said - remains a rather 'buggy' OS - and, as far
back as I can remember, it has always arbitrarily changed view settings
where and when it seemed to want to...

These included randomly deciding that it would prefer your desktop icons to
be re-arranged into a default order, and removing your painstakingly set
"details" columns in all of your music sub-folders full of MP3s!!

There is no rhyme or reason to it - XP just seems to forget things from
time to time - just thank God that XP hardly ever forgets something really
important in the way of system settings!!

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[Mayayana]

| There is no rhyme or reason to it - XP just seems to forget things from
| time to time

There's always rhyme and reason where software
is concerned. In the case of folder windows, the
problem is that the functionality is undocumented,
very poorly designed, faulty, and has no Control
Panel applet to deal with it. But the system is in
place, as I detailed above. It just needs to be
repaired in order for it to work.

When looking into the things that Microsoft does
it's tempting to think that much of the work is done
by teenage interns. Folder view settings are a good
example. They're obscure, abstruse, wildly overproduced,
and on top of it all, they never worked properly and
nobody noticed!

Explorer actually stores the settings and retrieves
them. (One can confirm that with Regmon/Procmon.)
But it doesn't store them properly, so it ignores
them at retrieval time. And many of the settings it
stores are ridiculous pseudo-code, combining several
fake and superfluous API values. Example:

Each "Shell" Registry key under the Bags key needs
a value named ShowCmd set to 1 in order to work properly.
Why? A clue is here in the description of the
WINDOWPLACEMENT structure:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms632611(v=vs.85).aspx

Microsoft's teenage interns were pretending that they
were working with Win32 API functions related to displaying
windows onscreen. The WINDOWPLACEMENT structure
(linked above) is used by GetWindowPlacement and
SetWindowPlacement API functions. If Explorer doesn't find
this value the "function call" fails! (Which in this case means
Explorer gives up and ignores the Registry settings for the
given folder.) But that's just part of it. None of
that will work, anyway, without a WFlags value set to
zero. What is WFlags? It's another tidbit borrowed from
the WINDOWPLACEMENT structure. So there are two
values -- dummy API function parameters -- that specify
whether the window should be minimized, maximized,
or "normal". And if those two values aren't in sync Explorer
gets confused, even though neither setting serves any
purpose: The WindowPos values in the same Registry key
are all that's needed to record and retrieve the last window
position and size!

 

[Tim Meddick]

I admit to knowing only a "hazy" overall picture, made up of mainly
guesswork, based mainly on my snooping into small choice chunks of code
that is the Windows OS - I have used binary editors, plain text editors,
resource section snooping software, dependency analysers and "process
explorer" to pursue my aim; to understand the general mechanisms of how
Windows, and it's dynamic link library, works.

In the end, I do know some things about how WinOS works, but don't know
allot more...

Your descriptions of the function calls involved seem completely valid, to
me...

However, in a similar way, the procedure chosen to deal with (specifically,
in this case) remembering icon positions on the desktop AND / OR the
remembering [or not of the user-chosen column-headings for a given folder,
may suffer from a similar mess-up (but utilizing different functions) that
may have it's cause in what could possibly be described as, perhaps, "badly
written" code, to which even your own description alludes...

To put it simply, you yourself describe how Windows *ucks-up in one
particular way, and all I'm saying is that, in my experience, Windows does
exhibit the problems I mentioned (forgetting desktop icon positions &
altered column-headings in Win Explorer's "details view"). Why it's any
more far-fetched to see errors of a similar nature happening in other areas
of Windows UI settings, is beyond me...

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.