Tuesday, May 31, 2011

M sick of....Folder Option View Settings?

I have had issues getting Vista to remember folder display settings from Day

1. I had hoped SP1 would fix them, but it didn't. I haven't seen anything

from Microsoft even acknowledging that there is a problem, so I don't have

high hopes that the issues will be fixed by SP2 either. The fixes I have

found on-line work temporarily, but eventually Vista starts ignoring the

customized settings. Over the past couple of days, folder display settings

are being randomly changed by Vista with increasing frequency. As well,

changing the settings in one folder will result in changes in another

completely unrelated folder. This bug is no longer just a minor annoyance.

I am very close to going back to XP because of it, even though I quite like

Vista. On to the description of the problem:



I have Windows Explorer set to open with My Computer expanded. The drives

are supposed to be shown as tiles, and grouped by type. A couple of days

ago Windows Explorer opened with the drives showing as an ungrouped list

instead of as tiles. I customized the view to display as grouped tiles. I

went into My Documents and found my self looking at Picture and Video

thumbnails, even though there isn't a single picture or video in the

directory. The directory is supposed to be set to Documents with details

displayed, and every subfolder is supposed to have the same settings. I

went into Customize Folder control panel, and found that it was still set as

Documents with settings applied to subfolders. I changed it to All Items,

clicked apply, and then reset it to Documents. However, even though I had

specified that this same setting be used for subfolders, numerous subfolders

still display as Pictures and Videos. If I reset them to Documents view,

the settings in the parent directory revert to Pictures and Videos. If I

reset the parent directory, a whole bunch of new subfolders that were fine

before now display as Pictures and Videos. I spent about 20minutes trying

to get the folders to display as I wanted them, but I eventually gave up

because I wasn't able to predict how customizing the view of one folder was

going to affect the view of another folder. I returned to My Computers and

found the drives being displayed as a list. I reset the display to show

tiles again. Returning to My Documents, I found myself staring at

thumbnails with all the customizations I had just made gone. Grr...Arghh!!!



On my D drive, I have a Temp folder in the root directory. I went into it

and found it displaying Music Icons even though there were no music files of

any kind in the directory. I reset it to display Documents with details

listed. I went in to My Music directory, and found that instead of showing

Music Icons, it was showing Documents with details listed. I set it back to

Music Icons. I went back to the Temp directory, and found that it had been

changed to Music Icons as well. Customizing the display type for either

directory changed the settings for the other directory. They are completely

unrelated directories, so I don't have a clue why the settings for one

affects the others.



Any insights as to what is going on, and how to fix it, would be

appreciated.M sick of....Folder Option View Settings?
I am probably not helping here because I don't have vista, but with XP there was a checkbox to ';remember each folder's settings'; perhaps this is what you are running into?

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