Solved File Explorer suddenly refusing to remember custom view settings

I maintain a bunch of folders containing nothing but program shortcuts, sort of like the Windows 3 Program Manager, and although I've configured File Explorer to details view, I always go back and set these to show icons. Since the last week or so, it doesn't remember the icon view for these folders across reboots. Anyone else seeing this or have any suggestions?

barreleye said:

I maintain a bunch of folders containing nothing but program shortcuts, sort of like the Windows 3 Program Manager, and although I've configured File Explorer to details view, I always go back and set these to show icons. Since the last week or so, it doesn't remember the icon view for these folders across reboots. Anyone else seeing this or have any suggestions?

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Don't see how that helps. I've already set all folders to General Items. My issue is that overriding the default Details view for certain folders suddenly isn't surviving reboots. This is stuff I've been doing since Windows 7 FWIW. I'm wondering if anyone is seeing similar after recent Windows updates, and if not, I guess I'll try reseting the default view, which I know will nuke folder customizations. Maybe that'll be enough to clear whatever glitch has developed.

barreleye said:

Don't see how that helps. I've already set all folders to General Items. My issue is that overriding the default Details view for certain folders suddenly isn't surviving reboots. This is stuff I've been doing since Windows 7 FWIW. I'm wondering if anyone is seeing similar after recent Windows updates, and if not, I guess I'll try reseting the default view, which I know will nuke folder customizations. Maybe that'll be enough to clear whatever glitch has developed.

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I think it pretty much happens to all of us at one time or another.
WinSetView, does seem to help though.

You may have hit the 5000 saved views limit. You can try increasing that setting via the registry:

The reason WinSetView is helpful in situations like this is that it completely clears out the BagMRU/Bags registry keys. Starting with a clean slate there makes Explorer behave properly. Of course, this means resetting all your folder views, but the idea is that you can set the defaults the way you like for each folder type and then only have to go back and do a few manual view changes here and there. Overall it saves time and sanity.

Anyone who has used Windows for many years has probably experienced this issue at some point in time.
It's never been properly fixed.

You can use PowerShell to count the number of tailored folder views you have set up to see how close you are getting to the 5000 limit.
See the code originally provided by the excellent KeithM and which is shown in Option 1 of
Increase Folder View Settings Cache Memory Size in Windows 10,11 - ElevenForumTutorials

If you've reached the limit then Windows will indeed forget additional tailored views you set up - just as you have described.

You can reduce the number of folders you need to tailor views for by setting up your default folder views to suit your needs for each folder type - Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, General items.
Apply Folder View to All Folders of Same Type - TenForumsTutorials
Apply Folder View to All Folders of Same Template Type - ElevenForumTutorials

If you have reached the limit & don't want to use that first tutorial to increase it then the remedy is to reset folder view settings to default i.e. remove all your tailored folder views and return all folder views to the default for each of their folder types.
Reset Folder View Settings to Default - TenForumsTutorials
Reset Folder View Settings to Default - ElevenForumTutorials


Best of luck,
Denis

Thanks, all. I have reached the 5000 limit per the Powershell command. The behavior is really dumb. Windows doesn't just "stop remembering". It deleted the ones I set up at the very beginning, and you might think it's like a queue, such that restoring the view would make it good for the next 5000, but no, it doesn't remember across reboots, hence what I said about "clearing the glitch" in my last message.

I'm pretty sure I've solved this problem before by using the "Apply to folders" or "Reset folders" option in folder settings. Does anyone know if increasing BagMRU Size will take effect immediately, or will I still have to reset? Tentative answer: The Powershell returned 5000 before, but now it's incrementing after customizing folders, so maybe I'm getting off easy. Didn't even have to reboot!

BTW, I have heard of this before, but it's been quite a while. My "New System\Registry Hacks" folder has subfolders for every version going back to XP. It's in the "XP" folder I find "bags8000.reg", dated 1/2/2004, which does increase BagMRU size. Clearly, I didn't look that far back when I installed Windows this time, including failing to see if it had been updated over the years, which it has. I do try and update these things with each new version of Windows, but I missed that one.

barreleye said:

Does anyone know if increasing BagMRU Size will take effect immediately, or will I still have to reset?

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If you increase the limit then you won't have to reset.

Denis

Glad to hear you found the root cause, but I still encourage you to use WinSetView. When Explorer reaches the saved view limit, or encounters any sort of corruption in the saved views, it's going to apply the default view found in the FolderTypes registry key. Why not set your preferred defaults in that key (which is what WinSetView does)? That way, any hiccup with Explorer is less of an issue and you can reset the views at any time (to get better performance and reliability) and only lose a few custom-set views.

Additionally, you would then have the ability to quickly set up new users and/or new computers with your preferred default views.

P.S. For safety (and the ability to go back to Windows defaults) WinSetView modifies a copy of FolderTypes in the user profile. It never touches anything in the machine part of the registry.

LesFerch said:

Glad to hear you found the root cause, but I still encourage you to use WinSetView. When Explorer reaches the saved view limit, or encounters any sort of corruption in the saved views, it's going to apply the default view found in the FolderTypes registry key. Why not set your preferred defaults in that key (which is what WinSetView does)? That way, any hiccup with Explorer is less of an issue and you can reset the views at any time (to get better performance and reliability) and only lose a few custom -set views.

Additionally, you would then have the ability to quickly set up new users and/or new computers with your preferred default views.

P.S. For safety (and the ability to go back to Windows defaults) WinSetView modifies a copy of FolderTypes in the user profile. It never touches anything in the machine part of the registry.

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I set everything to General Items (using a .reg file) and it to the same Details view (using Explorer options) except for this dozen or so folders. Setting them to icons view is the really tedious part of it. Would WinSetView help with that?

barreleye said:

I set everything to General Items (using a .reg file) and it to the same Details view (using Explorer options) except for this dozen or so folders. Setting them to icons view is the really tedious part of it. Would WinSetView help with that?

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Yes. While WinSetView includes the option to set all folders generic (same as the reg file you used), I wouldn't use that option.

Instead, I would set the Global view to Details, which will set all folder types to that view, and then just set the Pictures folder type to Icons. Click Submit and then all that's left to do is go to those dozen or so folders and set them to type "Pictures" (if they're not already set to that type).

That's assuming you want Pictures generally to be in Icon view. If that's not the case, then instead, leave everything in Details view (enabling the "make all folders generic" option would make no difference) and then manually set those dozen folders to Icons view.

LesFerch said:

Yes. While WinSetView includes the option to set all folders generic (same as the reg file you used), I wouldn't use that option.

Instead, I would set the Global view to Details, which will set all folder types to that view, and then just set the Pictures folder type to Icons. Click Submit and then all that's left to do is go to those dozen or so folders and set them to type "Pictures" (if they're not already set to that type).

That's assuming you want Pictures generally to be in Icon view. If that's not the case, then instead, leave everything in Details view (enabling the "make all folders generic" option would make no difference) and then manually set those dozen folders to Icons view.

Click to expand...

I had the same idea of usurping the other views for my purposes, and I tried it since my last post using the standard File Explorer facilities. However, the only way it would help is if I could set the view on a multiple folder selection. Windows allows me to do that with Folder Properties->Customize, but it only applies changes to the one I right-clicked on, which I consider a violation of a very basic UI design principle. Having to do this folder by folder is almost as much work as what I'm already doing, as I can't simply use the recursive option.

What would be great would be a program that takes a list of folders (textual names and GUIDs) and applies view settings to them, e.g. Medium icons for some, Large icons for others, etc.

Excellent minute piece of software, much appreciated Ghot!

barreleye said:

What would be great would be a program that takes a list of folders (textual names and GUIDs) and applies view settings to them, e.g. Medium icons for some, Large icons for others, etc.

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When it's a list of folders (as opposed to a hierarchy) there's no easy solution. It's near impossible to write a script to do that via direct registry manipulation because of the awkward design of the saved views registry entries. Logically, a folder would display in its default view (as specified in FolderTypes) and no saved view would be created unless the user changes something from the default and then, once a change is made, a saved view would be indexed by the folder path (which of course would have to update if the folder is moved or renamed). But, it doesn't work that way. Instead, a saved view is created for every folder you open (view is saved when you close the folder) with a serial numbered index. I've never seen any program that can add to those saved views. There is at least one program (ShellBagsView) that can let you change the basic view (List, Details, Icons) for already saved folder views, but it cannot add new views to the list.

It would be very helpful if you could select multiple folders and apply changes to the entire selection. Currently, the only way I can conceive of doing that (and I'm not sure it's possible) is to write an AutoIt or AutHotKey script that drives the GUI to make the same settings for all the selected folders.

Hmmm, thought... Write a script that takes a list of folders and makes Explorer open and close each one, ensuring that a saved view exists for each one in the registry. Then, in similar fashion to ShellBagsView, find each of those saved views and change the view to the user's choice. Maybe even taking one folder as a "template" to update the others so it can change every setting. I'll look into that...

CimRWolf said:

Excellent minute piece of software, much appreciated Ghot!

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I don't suppose Les'll burst into tears but Ghot merely mentioned its name, Les Ferch wrote WinSetView and posted it in TenForums & ElevenForum for us to use.

All the best,
Denis

LesFerch said:

Hmmm, thought... Write a script that takes a list of folders and makes Explorer open and close each one, ensuring that a saved view exists for each one in the registry. Then, in similar fashion to ShellBagsView, find each of those saved views and changes the view to the user's choice. Maybe even taking one folder as a "template" to update the others so it can change every setting. I'll look into that...

Click to expand...

Ugh, I was hoping there would be a Shell API for this, but I didn't find one when I looked this morning. I could easily have missed it, though, considering what a maze the documentation is, but it seems Microsoft didn't deign to expose the settings at this granular of a level. I took a look at ShellBagsView, and it appears to be just for listing, but if you can successfully write what you can read, it seems like the approach you outlined would work.

barreleye said:

Ugh, I was hoping there would be a Shell API for this, but I didn't find one when I looked this morning. I could easily have missed it, though, considering what a maze the documentation is, but it seems Microsoft didn't deign to expose the settings at this granular of a level. I took a look at ShellBagsView, and it appears to be just for listing, but if you can successfully write what you can read, it seems like the approach you outlined would work.

Click to expand...

ShellBagsView can set a view (List, Details, Icons) for any existing entry via File menu, Set Mode. The developer could extend that to set any folder attributes. Certainly doing a copy paste from one folder to another (or many) would be an easy enhancement.

Anyhow, I did a proof of concept of the script idea and it all works! Key commands:

Open a folder so a Bags entry will be created (repeat as necessary):
Explorer C:\AnyFolder

Close all open Explorer windows, without killing Explorer, to create the desired Bags entries:
Nircmd.exe win close class "CabinetWClass"

Get CSV listing of folder paths and the corresponding Bags key node slots:
ShellBagsView /scomma bags.csv

Export template Reg file of template node slot key:
Reg.exe export HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\$Node

For each path, where template is to be applied, get node slot from CSV file, edit template to target node slot and import:
Reg.exe import $Template

When I get a chance, I'll put together a command line version. That's not too hard. A good interface will be much harder.

LesFerch said:

ShellBagsView can set a view (List, Details, Icons) for any existing entry via File menu, Set Mode. The developer could extend that to set any folder attributes. Certainly doing a copy paste from one folder to another (or many) would be an easy enhancement.

Click to expand...

I see it now, under Version 1.25 in the Version history. I only looked at the description above it and the command line reference below it. lol

Anyhow, I did a proof of concept of the script idea and it all works! Key commands:
...
When I get a chance, I'll put together a command line version. That's not too hard. A good interface will be much harder.

Click to expand...

Cool, I'll look forward to seeing it.

LesFerch said:

ShellBagsView

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BTW, I just downloaded it, and I find that it gets a lot of paths wrong, including the ones I just set that survived a reboot after increasing BagMRU Size. For example, my Tools folder containing shortcuts is at C:\users\my_name\Progs\Tools, but ShellBagsView reports it at C:\users\my_name\AppData\Roaming\Tools, where it has never been; indeed, trying to open it does nothing. Also, there's the occasional weird truncation of folder names, like Y:\Books\nuals, which should be Y:\Books\Manuals. There are other paths that aren't fully qualified. Of course, there are a ton of entries that no longer exist, but I attribute that to really poor design on Microsoft's part.