How to get rid of Web View folders

[Jon Martin]

Hello,

I have a problem that is driving me nuts. When I open a
Windows Explorer, I get a grey, blanked out area in the
left hand panel. The panel used to show my directory
structure.

I think Web View may have something to do with this, or it
may have happened when I installed a recent Service Pack.

How do I get a regular (non-web) Windows Explorer back?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Jon

 

[Greg Stigers]

In Explorer, from the Tools menu, choose Folder Options. On the default
General tab, in the Web View group, choose the Use Windows classic folders
radio button. Choose [OK].

 

[Jon Martin]

Greg,

Thanks, but unfortunately, that doesn't work.

I've tried that, and as many other ways as I can think of,
and now, every time I open the windows explorer, the left
panel is greyed out with no directory tree.

The windows explorer that comes up now has options to
search for files and to do some web related stuff-- as
opposed to the old explorer that didn't have any of those
features. It is almost as if the explorer.exe in the Winnt
directory has been replaced.

However, even if I copy the explorer.exe over from another
of my Windows 2000 machines, I still end up with the same
results. That tells me that there is an "ini" or maybe a
template file somewhere that is telling the explorer to
use the web interface-- which I think is called 'webview'.

But anyway, thanks for your response.

JM

 

[Greg Stigers]

Left pane, OK, so it's not Web View. I'm sorry, I should have read more
carefully. If I read correctly, when you bring up Explorer, the "Explorer
Bar" defaults to something besides the folder view. Try this. From the View
menu, choose Explorer Bar, then choose Folders, to be sure. If that does the
trick, then the next question seems to be why Explorer defaults to a search
pane instead of the folder pane.

Also, from the right pane, if you choose a folder, then from the context
menu choose Explore, what view do you see?

For fun, also bring up IE, and enter the file URL file://C:\. That should
give you a view of your C drive, without an Explorer Bar.

 

[Guest]

Greg,

Thanks again for the help.

When I open 'view' and then choose 'explorer bar',
the 'folders' option is already checked on. When I check
it off, the greyed-out blank left panel goes away and I am
left with just the regular right panels showing
subdirectories.

Oddly enough, following your suggestion to open IE with
the URL 'file://C:\' gives me the exact same results that
I've been seeing with my Windows Explorer! I get a greyed-
out left panel!

So, it looks to me as if IE has replaced the regular
windows explorer. That's probably why I am seeing odd menu
buttons on the windows explorer-- things like 'search'
and 'history'.

So, I'm a bit baffled. I'm thinking about uninstalling IE
to see what that does. But I suspect it will have no
effect. I am also thinking about comparing my WinNT folder
to another one of our machines to see if I can determine
what has changed.

Unfortunately, I think something got changed way down in
the registery-- it appears to have happened during a
recent windows update when I downloaded some files from
MicroSoft.

So, I may have to live with this, but I really miss being
able to see my directory tree in the left panel.

Thanks again for your help.

Jon Martin

 

[Jon Martin]

This is to Greg and to anyone else who has been following
this post.

I ended up using my emergency repair disks to fix the
problem. I started windows from the CD and followed the
prompts to repair the system.

Along the way I got a lot of cryptic error messages which
all looked like:

*********************************************************

The following value in the .SIF file that setup uses
is corrupted or missing:

Value 0 on the line in section [SourceDiskFiles] with
key "jit.dll".

* To skip this file, press ESC

CAUTION: If you skip this file, setup may not complete
and Windows 2000 may not work properly.

* To quit Setup, press F3

*******************************************************

I choose to press F3 everytime one of these messages came
up. I ended up with 33 similar messages with the only
difference being the name of the file contained in the
quotes.

Once that was done, I rebooted, and now I have the regular
old windows explorer. Which is what I wanted in the first
place.

I can't be certain how this mess came about, but it seems
to me that the last thing I had done prior to all of this
is to use MicroSoft's website to install updates.

Anyway, I am now a believer in emergency repair disks.

Jon Martin