how do i bring back the old windows 7 file explorer back to windows 11?

TraderGary · Oct 14, 2023

archfoto said:
The only thing I would change about file explorer in Win 11 is to stop the expansion of all the subdirectories in the navigation pane. Other than that, it works quite well. And, I have tried all the batch files and fixes, to that end, and yet, the subdirectories still expand in the expansion pane.

Make sure you do not have a check mark in "Expand to open folder".

I don't use any of the 3rd party apps.

archfoto · Oct 14, 2023

TraderGary said:
Make sure you do not have a check mark in "Expand to open folder".

View attachment 74213

I don't use any of the 3rd party apps.

Thanks, TraderGary -
Yeah, I unchecked that right away the first day. I am running 3 external drives (+the internal SSD hard drive), and anytime I go to subdirectory on one of them, it shows all the sub-directories in that drive in the navigation pane (which it did not, in Win 10), which is redundant, as I have them visible in the pane on the right, as well. I can, of course collapse it in the nav pane, but it is an annoyance. Maybe it works in some versions of Win 11, but not in mine. MS needs to fix this!

hdmi · Oct 14, 2023

archfoto said:
Thanks hdmi, but my own experience with Win 11 is that I once tried to change things with 3rd-party patches to get back to "Classic Windows," and my computer would not restart. I had to finally put it in safe mode to boot and restore to an earlier time to get it to restart. It would be nice if MS would give me the option with an update to get what I had in Win 10.

ExplorerPatcher does not modify any system files. It just stores some of its settings in the registry. Settings management
If you get a black screen with only a mouse cursor, usually it's because the explorer process has crashed or failed to load. When this happens it should still be possible to open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc and, next, in Task Manager, click on Run new task. In there, the explorer process can be started by running a command:
explorer.exe
If this doesn't work and doing a reboot also doesn't fix the problem, then you can still try to uninstall ExplorerPatcher by running a command:
%programfiles%\ExplorerPatcher\ep_setup /uninstall
...or try to bring up the ExplorerPatcher settings window panel by running a command:
rundll32.exe C:\Windows\dxgi.dll,ZZGUI
Each time after Windows Update finalizes the install of a Cumulative Update such that it updates Windows 11 to a new build number so it requires doing a reboot, ExplorerPatcher should automatically download the new symbols from Microsoft. It should show a notification to inform that this download went successful. Each time after this notification pops up, I choose to manually reboot once more, to prevent hiccups that may otherwise occur at a later point in time. When they start to occur, they occur in such a way that these hiccups don't go away until I reboot anyway still nevertheless so that's why.

Further, unless you understand what you are doing, you shouldn't run ExplorerPatcher on anything besides production builds of Windows 10/11 so, if it works for you on an insider build, then it's just because you are lucky.

Finally, even though it warns you in the Updates section that receiving pre-release versions if available is not recommended, always making sure to use the latest pre-release of ExplorePatcher greatly helps to improve the chance of not running into bugs, as Windows keeps frequently changing via Windows Update, due to Microsoft loving to fiddle with it to the point (and beyond) of treating us like rats stuck in a lab. Programs like Open-Shell and ExplorerPatcher exist to unstuck us from the lab. Without these two open source projects, we would be in dire straits (or probably a lot worse).

TraderGary · Oct 14, 2023

archfoto said:
Thanks, TraderGary -
Yeah, I unchecked that right away the first day. I am running 3 external drives (+the internal SSD hard drive), and anytime I go to subdirectory on one of them, it shows all the sub-directories in that drive in the navigation pane (which it did not, in Win 10), which is redundant, as I have them visible in the pane on the right, as well. I can, of course collapse it in the nav pane, but it is an annoyance. Maybe it works in some versions of Win 11, but not in mine. MS needs to fix this!

My habit is to use the right pane to expand and collapse a folder, so I don't have your problem. It's how one is used to working. I know it's hard to retrain a reflex action you've used for a long period of time. And you're right, the MS developers should have considered both ways of working and have offered the option you need for the way you work.

archfoto · Oct 14, 2023

hdmi said:
ExplorerPatcher does not modify any system files. It just stores some of its settings in the registry. Settings management
If you get a black screen with only a mouse cursor, usually it's because the explorer process has crashed or failed to load. When this happens it should still be possible to open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc and, next, in Task Manager, click on Run new task. In there, the explorer process can be started by running a command:
explorer.exe
If this doesn't work and doing a reboot also doesn't fix the problem, then you can still try to uninstall ExplorerPatcher by running a command:
%programfiles%\ExplorerPatcher\ep_setup /uninstall
...or try to bring up the ExplorerPatcher settings window panel by running a command:
rundll32.exe C:\Windows\dxgi.dll,ZZGUI
Each time after Windows Update finalizes the install of a Cumulative Update such that it updates Windows 11 to a new build number so it requires doing a reboot, ExplorerPatcher should automatically download the new symbols from Microsoft. It should show a notification to inform that this download went successful. Each time after this notification pops up, I choose to manually reboot once more, to prevent hiccups that may otherwise occur at a later point in time. When they start to occur, they occur in such a way that these hiccups don't go away until I reboot anyway still nevertheless do that's why.

Further, unless you understand what you are doing, you shouldn't run ExplorerPatcher on anything besides production builds of Windows 10/11 so, if it works for you on an insider build, then it's just because you are lucky.

Finally, even though it warns you in the Updates section that receiving pre-releases versions if available is not recommended, always making sure to use the latest pre-release of ExplorePatcher greatly helps to improve the chance of not running into bugs, as Windows keeps frequently changing via Windows Update, due to Microsoft loving to fiddle with it to the point (and beyond) of treating us like rats stuck in a lab. Programs like Open-Shell and ExplorerPatcher exist to unstuck us from the lab. Without these two open source projects, we would be in dire straits (or probably a lot worse).

Hi hdmi -
When I said patches, I meant something like Classic Shell, which I found to my dismay disabled my new computer from booting (It worked great in Win 10). I know there are newer programs of this type out there, but I have adapted to the Win 11 format, and it isn't all that bad, once one gets the hang of it. At least, I don't have to deal with "tiles." I use my computer for my work, and can't afford the time to deal with it being down for any reason. My old computer with Win 10 took up to 10 minutes to boot. The new one with Win 11 Pro, less than a minute. Email is ready seconds later. Some of the programs that ran in Win 10 don't work well in Win 11. Besides the fact this computer is way newer technology, and processing power, it is not currently bogged down with the normal bloating that occurs when your OS is long in the tooth.

TraderGary · Oct 14, 2023

@hdmi I don't use either Open-Shell or ExplorerPatcher. When you say, "Without these two open source projects, we would be in dire straits (or probably a lot worse)", what dire straits should I be experiencing?

Edwin · Oct 14, 2023

TraderGary said:
"Without these two open source projects, we would be in dire straits (or probably a lot worse)"

The native Explorer is a dinosaur already, and MS keeps killing off it's capabilities more and more!
Explorer is capable of amazing things! Use it!

TraderGary · Oct 14, 2023

@Edwin Is that supposed to be an example of an amazing thing? What makes it amazing?

Edwin · Oct 14, 2023

TraderGary said:
Is that supposed to be an example of an amazing thing? What makes it amazing?

It's just one tiny example from QTTabBar..., hovering Jump Lists from the Navigation Pane, as opposed to drilling down, or something...
It's impossible to explain everything..., Sorry for the intrusion, just pretend I never said anything!

TraderGary · Oct 14, 2023

Edwin said:
It's just one tiny example from QTTabBar..., hovering Jump Lists from the Navigation Pane, as opposed to drilling down, or something...
It's impossible to explain everything..., Sorry for the intrusion, just pretend I never said anything!

OK. I understand drilling down. I've done it with file explorer for many years. File Explorer does everything I want and need. Quite frankly I'm not experiencing any "dire needs". I wonder if hovering jump lists might not even get in the way of needing to do real work. Can you turn them OFF?

Edwin · Oct 14, 2023

TraderGary said:
File Explorer does everything I want and need. ... I'm not experiencing any "dire needs".

Understood.

TraderGary said:
I wonder if hovering jump lists might not even get in the way of needing to do real work.

Actually, it increases the speed of managing/navigating folders which, in turn, increases productivity.

TraderGary said:
Can you turn them OFF?

Yes.

hdmi · Oct 16, 2023

archfoto said:
Hi hdmi -
When I said patches, I meant something like Classic Shell, which I found to my dismay disabled my new computer from booting (It worked great in Win 10). I know there are newer programs of this type out there, but I have adapted to the Win 11 format, and it isn't all that bad, once one gets the hang of it. At least, I don't have to deal with "tiles." I use my computer for my work, and can't afford the time to deal with it being down for any reason. My old computer with Win 10 took up to 10 minutes to boot. The new one with Win 11 Pro, less than a minute. Email is ready seconds later. Some of the programs that ran in Win 10 don't work well in Win 11. Besides the fact this computer is way newer technology, and processing power, it is not currently bogged down with the normal bloating that occurs when your OS is long in the tooth.

Back in 2015 when Windows 10 came out, Classic Shell kept having a lot of problems with it which took a lot of time until most of them were fixed. Some 2 years later, in 2017 the author abandoned the project and released its source code into the public domain so others could pick up on it. This is how Open-Shell came to be on GitHub. Open-Shell has been running always perfectly stable for me on Windows 11. I upgraded from Windows 10 to 11 during the first weekend after Windows 11 got officially released, and, within less than a week after that, I installed both Open-Shell and ExplorerPatcher on my Windows 11. I have been running them both alongside each other like this ever since, and I still am. At one point the Start Menu of Open-Shell stopped working because Microsoft had changed something in Windows 11 via an update that came through Windows Update. So, next, I just grabbed the latest pre-release version of Open-Shell from GitHub. A few seconds later, my Start Menu was working normally again. Besides this, the number of problems I have experienced with Open-Shell equals zero. Zilch. Zippo. Nada. Bupkis. I don't know what some people do to their computer.

TraderGary said:
@hdmi I don't use either Open-Shell or ExplorerPatcher. When you say, "Without these two open source projects, we would be in dire straits (or probably a lot worse)", what dire straits should I be experiencing?

"we" = the people who use our Windows for a lot more stuff than just opening a handful of apps so "we" rely (sometimes heavily) on specific GUI features of the Start Menu, File Explorer, the Taskbar and taskbar Toolbars, etc. to stay productive with our various types of (complex) workflow. So, it isn't so much about us feeling that we get forced to retrain our muscle memory nor is about us refusing to constantly adapt, but rather, it's about truly requiring the features that get screwed up by Microsoft or that go missing due to Microsoft's mental disorder of "less is more because else the Feng Shui doesn't work so you should just accept you need very little more than the rounded corners, like, be happy, always look on the bright side of life, please use the Feedback Hub and then STFU".

hdmi · Oct 16, 2023

I don't use QTTabBar because it has no option to turn off the tabs so, if you don't need tabs and you only need a bar with custom commands in File Explorer, it still always shows a bar that takes up screen estate for no reason.

EDIT: Speaking of screen estate, File Explorer lets you use compact ~~mode~~ view which reduces the line spacing in the right pane. But it doesn't reduce the line spacing in the nav pane. For this, I use a setting in Classic Explorer of Open-Shell.