Solved File Explorer suddenly refusing to remember custom view settings

LesFerch · Feb 27, 2023

barreleye said:
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.

That's concerning. So, C:\users\my_name\Progs\Tools is not even in the list at all?

barreleye · Feb 27, 2023

LesFerch said:
That's concerning. So, C:\users\my_name\Progs\Tools is not even in the list at all?

After sorting by path, I see now it's there, but the Last Modified Time is from 9/22/2022. The AppData one has the date/time from today, but the folder doesn't exist. OTOH, Y:\Books\Manuals isn't in the list at all. Instead, there are a bunch of Y:\Books\nuals\subfolder entries, which do exist, though under Manuals, not "nuals". To make it even more fun, there are many correct Y:\Books\subfolder items; only the Manuals ones are borked. The "nuals" have dates ranging from 9/22/2022 to 2/27/2023, so this would seem to be an ongoing thing.

Skimming the 5045 items, most look correct, but there are these oddball items dated as recently as today. I don't know if the Bags system itself is corrupted or if it's a bug in ShellBagsView.

barreleye · Feb 28, 2023

I just ran ShellBagsView on my other PC running Windows 10, which was formerly my main PC but is now a headless file server, and I find the same "nuals" items and missing "Manuals" as on my Windows 11 PC. Among all the correct paths, I also find X:\itar (should be Guitar) and X:\wnloads (should be Downloads). These are totally separate Windows installations; that is, the new PC wasn't an upgrade of the old PC.

LesFerch · Feb 28, 2023

There has to be an explanation. Usually something like that is the result of an encoding issue (e.g Unicode characters bring dropped) but there's no indication you have anything but standard ASCII characters in your folder names. Very odd. I suggest trying another tool that displays the Shellbags. Try Shellbags Explorer or SeeShells.

ShellBags Explorer | SANS Institute

Download ShellBags Explorer, built by SANS Instructor Eric Zimmerman, a GUI for browsing shellbags data.

www.sans.org

SeeShells

Web site created using create-react-app

rickleinecker.github.io

barreleye · Feb 28, 2023

LesFerch said:
There has to be an explanation. Usually something like that is the result of an encoding issue (e.g Unicode characters bring dropped) but there's no indication you have anything but standard ASCII characters in your folder names. Very odd. I suggest trying another tool that displays the Shellbags. Try Shellbags Explorer or SeeShells.

The folder name leading two-character deletions I saw in ShellBagsView are not present in Shellbags Explorer. Must be a bug in the former.

LesFerch · Feb 28, 2023

barreleye said:
The folder name leading two-character deletions I saw in ShellBagsView are not present in Shellbags Explorer. Must be a bug in the former.

Dang. That makes the project harder. Any chance you can send a bug report to Nirsoft with screenshots showing the issue? Maybe he can fix it.

Try3 · Feb 28, 2023

I don't know if this is helpful or not but...

The PowerShell script reports 112 entries in my main computer.
ShellBagsView reports 94. It includes at least one folder that does not exist [I don't think it has ever existed].
None of my folder paths or filenames contain any special characters of any kind.

All the best,
Denis

barreleye · Feb 28, 2023

LesFerch said:
Dang. That makes the project harder.

Another complication ShellBags Explorer seems to have revealed is non-uniqueness of path entries. For example, under its "My Computer" node, there is "C:\Users\my_name\Progs", but not all its subfolders are present underneath it. It gives the absolute path as "Desktop\My Computer\C:\Users\my_name\Progs". However, if I look under the "Shared Documents Folder (Users Files)" node, that's where I find Progs and the complete list of its subfolders underneath it. It gives the absolute path as "Desktop\Shared Documents Folder (Users Files)\Progs". The thing is, Progs isn't a shared folder, and it's the only thing listed under this node.

LesFerch · Feb 28, 2023

barreleye said:
Another complication ShellBags Explorer seems to have revealed is non-uniqueness of path entries.

I was expecting as much (since there can be multiple views for any given physical folder) and I think that explains why the PowerShell script is reporting more saved views than Nirsoft's ShellBagsView. I think the latter is not showing the duplicate paths. Welcome to the confusing world of Explorer folder views.

Example (four different possible views for Downloads):
This PC > Downloads
C:\Users\Ferch\Downloads
This PC > Downloads accessed via a File Dialog
C:\Users\Ferch\Downloads accessed via a File Dialog