Stop folder views changing? Please! Julian 10.07.2007 14:18:02 Madness beckons... I know about folder templates, I also know that - bizarrely - the view a folder presents can depend on how you reached it (though if anyone ... "using your skill and judgement in 20 words or less" can explain the principles feel free!:), and I know that there is a 5000 (?) limit on the number of "individual" views that Vista will remember (if only!) My (increasing) aggravation is that when I change a view on a folder I DO NOT want the template updated to reflect what I have chosen for this specific folder! [which is what *seems* to be happening... I keep setting views and they rarely seem the same when I return. I might just have the memory of a goldfish but... what was I saying? Ah yes... and how can I persuade Vista to remember the views for a drive which is mapped, so that if the drive is unmounted and then remounted it is as I left it. In other words: how do I make a folder look some particular way, stay that way, and not affect anything else - ever... unless *I* decide otherwise? Is there perhaps some way to setup desktop.ini to do it?, he asked (perhaps over) optimistically. Julian

Re: Stop folder views changing? Please! "cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)" <cquirkenews[ at ]nospam.mvps.org> 11.07.2007 08:35:06 On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:18:02 -0700, Julian [Quoted Text] >Madness beckons... Madness takes its toll. Please have the exact change ready >I know about folder templates, I also know that - bizarrely - the view a >folder presents can depend on how you reached it (though if anyone ... "using >your skill and judgement in 20 words or less" can explain the principles feel >free!:), and I know that there is a 5000 (?) limit on the number of >"individual" views that Vista will remember (if only!) Are they still using a global FIFO store to track these things? Sounds strange, given they dump so much stuff in Desktop.ini already (and take enough risks there to open up an infection vector). >My (increasing) aggravation is that when I change a view on a folder I DO >NOT want the template updated to reflect what I have chosen for this specific >folder! [which is what *seems* to be happening... There's a setting to remember views for each folder; I presume that's on (check that it is, just in case). That would then use the system you describe, but there may be a complicating factor. Unlike XP and older, Vista no longer uses a single default template for undefined views. Instead, it switches between a number of such templates depending on the content it discovers there. The question is; does this respect or override any per-folder settings you have "remembered" for that folder? I suspect it doesn't. In effect, when you set "this is the view I want for folder X", it may remember "this is the view I want for folder X as contents of type Y". If it determines it's now type Z, it falls back to the default settings for type Z, and I suspect your type Y preferences for that folder are thrown away. Normally one can appear to disable this type-sensitivity (which is a PITA; I don't want some dit to suddenly act as a picture gallery just because someone dropped a JPG in it) by setting all type templates to the same view, i.e. List. But this won't help your pattern (if I have deduced it correctly) if it's still fussing about whether your contents are type Y or Z (even if it's merely swapping in templates with the same settings). This stuff needs to die, or at least be killable. I don't want to wait for some dumb-ass code to wade through thousands of items to guess what view to use when I just want the same view anyway, and I do NOT want the OS groping files, for safety (exploit avoidance) reasons. >Ah yes... and how can I persuade Vista to remember the views for a drive >which is mapped, so that if the drive is unmounted and then remounted it is >as I left it. Now *that's* another story. Goldfish may remember things like that for seconds, but Windows won't remember removable disks at all. There are two good reasons for that: - there are an unbounded number of removable disks - removable disks may be changed outside the system It could use the "cookie" approach to remembering these things, i.e. by writing a Desktop.ini to the disk (bad idea) or a per-installation entry to an existing Desktop.ini on the disk (better idea, so that different systems maintain thier own views of the disk). That has the advantage of scalability (obeys the "do not store unbounded data in fixed global locations" dictum) but breaks a safety rule ("do not initiate risk that the user has not indicated an intention to take"). OK, we know how useless MS is in terms of that safety rule, but I wouldn't want to encourage worse behavior. Mind you, they've been breaking that ruls on diskettes since Win95, writing tracking labels to the boot record (if the PC's drive is bad and track 0 on the diskette is trashed, bye-bye data) so perhaps editing an existing Desktop.ini isn't so horrendous, until you consider this as an attack vector. That risk is mitigated (limited to a narrower scope of re-infecting the same PC) if settings are tracked by installtion so other PCs don't process the changes. >In other words: how do I make a folder look some particular way, stay that >way, and not affect anything else - ever... unless *I* decide otherwise? I'm not sure if you can. MS often offers functionality that works only within a certain set of conditions, and when it's "eye candy", I generally don't fuss much about it. When it's something like "dual-booting XP And Vista works only if you don't mind Vista losing all Previous Versions and System Restore fallback", then I get pissed off. >Is there perhaps some way to setup desktop.ini to do it?, he asked (perhaps >over) optimistically. Maybe, but I haven't swotted that up - I think you're on the right track, though. Let's see if there's an "everything you hoped you wouldn't need to know about Desktop.ini" article in TechNet or MSDN... Search( Vista Desktop.ini ) Hmm, lots of breakages, or at least forum frowns. http://help.wugnet.com/vista/Desktop-ini-desktop-ftopict26879.html Funny how XP never had that problem... I just put them in the corner and forget about them (visible Desktop,ini on Vista desktop) http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/169/1/ Interesting, that somewhere it gets processed as a generic .ini file (maybe in the StartUp folders?) if set to -h -s attributes. Better search, better results (eventually)... http://mc-computing.com/WinExplorer/desktop_ini.htm Meaty, but dates from Win2000 era: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/0300/w2kui/ And now the exploits: http://secunia.com/advisories/11633/ http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_vul23006.htm That's what happens when you f^&% with the "safety rule". From a great blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/27/54715.aspx A good side track... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321281 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305709/EN-US/ http://support.microsoft.com/kb/156568/EN-US/ Not the pot of gold I was hoping to find, though. >------------ ----- --- -- - - - - Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n) >------------ ----- --- -- - - - -