gpedit.msc Open and SaveAs dialog window PlacesBar tweak

[=?iso-8859-15?Q?Marek_M=E4nd?=]

I have small misunderstaning using "Microsoft WinXP Group Policy Editor"
(gpedit.msc) to tweak the PlacesBar for File-Open dialogs.

If I navigate in Policy Editor to the branch
User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows
Explorer\Common Open File Dialog

and then click on "Items displayed in Places Bar" i can configure the file
paths of the items on PlacesBar.

The problem is I want to have "My Network Places" icon on the PlacesBar
like it was before tweaking. The issue is that when setting value
MyNetworkPlaces
as one file path,
the common Open dialog will appear now without the "Entire Network" item.
Besides the PlaceBar item icon is not the nicest then.

Yes, I can hack registry and replace that Place(n) value of REG_SZ type in
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32\Placesbar]
with new DWORD 0x00000012 value.
Then I also can see the "Entire Network" icon in the "My Network Places"
filelist.


But "WindowsXP Group Policy Editor" seems to accept only strings there.

I would like to know what is the mnemonic-constant/file-path in "WindowsXP
Group Policy Editor" to be entered, so that "Entire Network" icon will
also be visible in the "My Network Places" filelist among other items?

It just cant be that bad that official tool such as policy editor is so
crippled and BS and one has to do extra registry hacking each time policy
editor cant handle non string values there?

;(

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

Yes, I can hack registry and replace that Place(n) value of REG_SZ type
in
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32\Placesbar]
with new DWORD 0x00000012 value. Then I also can see the "Entire
Network" icon in the "My Network Places" filelist.


But "WindowsXP Group Policy Editor" seems to accept only strings there.

Correct. AFAIK, the "WindowsXP Group Policy Editor" creates REG_SZ type
entries only within that key and does not take advantage of REG_DWORD
or REG_EXPAND_SZ.

I would like to know what is the mnemonic-constant/file-path in
"WindowsXP Group Policy Editor" to be entered, so that "Entire
Network" icon will also be visible in the "My Network Places" filelist
among other items?

No way - you may want to use "TweakUI" instead.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

TweakUI > Common Dialogs > Places Bar.

 

[=?iso-8859-15?Q?Marek_M=E4nd?=]

Yes, I can hack registry and replace that Place(n) value of REG_SZ type
in
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32\Placesbar]
with new DWORD 0x00000012 value. Then I also can see the "Entire
Network" icon in the "My Network Places" filelist.

But "WindowsXP Group Policy Editor" seems to accept only strings there.

Correct. AFAIK, the "WindowsXP Group Policy Editor" creates REG_SZ type
entries only within that key and does not take advantage of REG_DWORD
or REG_EXPAND_SZ.

Thank you for confirming.
This "Group Policy Editor" looks quite silly then, even though Microsoft
probably thought of it as a powertool for admins to manage resources... ;D

No way - you may want to use "TweakUI" instead.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

TweakUI > Common Dialogs > Places Bar.

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I was aware of that WinXP-Powertool-TweakUI
and before writing this post here I actually used it and convinced it
works fine (one must select "Network Neighborhood" value from the
dropdown) and allows to include also the "Entire Network" item under "My
Network Places".

Seeing that TweakUI uses the term "Network Neighborhood" I tried the idea
to write into "Policy editor" the value "NetworkNeighborhood" (one word
because the 'constants' in policy editor examples seem to use such
notation such as MyDocuments MyPictures etc), but it didnt work as
expected so I wrote here to ask opinions from smarter people than I am.

Anyway I have given up and stick to TweakUI and registry hacking.
But Microsoft has written a crap admin tool =D.

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

Seeing that TweakUI uses the term "Network Neighborhood" I tried the
idea to write into "Policy editor" the value "NetworkNeighborhood"
(one word because the 'constants' in policy editor examples seem to
use such notation such as MyDocuments MyPictures etc), but it didnt
work as expected so I wrote here to ask opinions from smarter people
than I am.

Depending on the system language, you may want to enter the path
%UserProfile%\Netzwerkumgebung (Example: German)
in policy editor. This works for the Network Neighborhood, however,
showing the default folder icon only.