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| 30th May 2006 | UNEARTHING SOME OLD NUGGETS |
Brian Grainger |
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It really amazes me sometimes how much information is out there on the web - finding it is the problem. Today's discoveries all started when I had a problem with Windows Explorer that had occurred to me once before. The files in Windows Explorer, and those listed in the dialog box when I do a File Open or File Save, are listed in size order, rather than alphabetical order! I go through the routine of sorting one folder properly by clicking the name column. I then click Tools - Folder Options from the menus and click the View tab. I then click the Like current folder button. This is supposed to make every folder look like the alphabetical order I want. However, when I restart my machine everything is back haywire again. Of course, I had forgotten how I solved this problem the last time it occurred, so a Goggle search was necessary. I first of all searched for: "Windows Explorer" "sort order" This was quite useful and brought up many items, among which was Microsoft Knowledge Base article 229070. This tells you to do what I had already done BUT then close Windows Explorer by pressing the CTRL key while clicking the X close box at the top right of the Windows Explorer window. I found out later this did not work! However, amongst all the other articles I began to see references to a Registry Value Name of shellstate, located in the key: The technique in the article 229070 was supposed to change the value of shellstate. Another Microsoft Knowledge Base article, 233526, actually tells you what value to use for shellstate to solve my problem. I seem to remember this is how I solved the problem last time. This time it failed to help me out. Anyway, this shellstate looked interesting and I wanted to find out if it was documented as to the meaning of the data it contained. I googled for shellstate and got many more interesting articles. Amongst them was a forum article from a user who had a similar problem to me and was asking for help. This time Windows Explorer kept displaying folders in icon view, rather than the list view he wanted. A gentleman called Dave Candy replied. He gave a wonderfully complete answer, which suggested the deletion of a number of registry entries and mentioned the magic shellstate again. More importantly, to me anyway, Dave Candy explained how Windows used these registry values to display what it did. He was clearly a really bright guy and I learned a lot. I think he must be an MVP, (Most Valuable Professional). It was from reading his answer that I found my solution. Apparently two of the keys he recommended deleting were: These keys are used to keep a record of folder view characteristics when you allow each folder to have its own view settings. Using Regedit I had a look at those keys on my machine and found there were 100 subkeys under each key. Rather a lot, I thought, if every folder should display the same! I decided to follow his advice and delete these keys. For good measure I followed the procedure of Knowledge Base article 229070 straight afterwards. After rebooting my machine I found my problem was resolved. Every folder I looked at was now sorted alphabetically. I still wonder whether the 100 subkeys was significant. Is there a limit and perhaps once reached problems start occurring? I shall be keeping an eye on this in the future. Anyway - the reason for writing this was not to explain how I resolved my problem, useful though it may be. I decided that as Dave Candy was such a bright guy there might be more stuff on the web in his name. I googled for "Dave Candy" and quickly decided this was not restricted enough, as I was getting references to any number of different people of that name. I refined my search by googling for: You can find this web site at: This site will not change now and Dave has thoughtfully provided a zip file, (on the front page), with the contents of the whole site included. Download the file and unzip it and you can browse the site offline at your leisure. You may think the story ends here but no, there was one final revelation. Amongst Dave's tips was a section on using DOS. He mentioned that on the Windows 98 CD there was a directory called olddos, which contained DOS command files that only worked on FAT16 formatted disks. These files have long since been removed from the Windows CD but Dave gives a link to where it may be obtained. Given that Dave's web site was written some time ago, I wondered if this Microsoft FTP site still existed. I checked and amazingly it still does - a wonderful source of some of the older Microsoft stuff. So, I have had a very productive time. I have solved my probem; I have found a great source of Windows and Word tips and I have found where Microsoft are hiding some of the stuff they no longer support. |
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