Windows10.

The desktop shortcuts yield a folder with floating properties
regarding windows size and its Icon-size contents.

Is there any way to fix PERMANTELY these properties?

I prefer a small window containing large icons, and always maintaining
those sizes.

At present these size properties vary continuously.

P

"Peter Jason" <pj@jostle.com> wrote

| The desktop shortcuts yield a folder with floating properties
| regarding windows size and its Icon-size contents.
| | Is there any way to fix PERMANTELY these properties?
|

You can set the properties provided by the IShellLink
interface. The view options are not part of that. I'm not
sure how it works in Win10.

In XP the view options can
be set per window but the system arrived broken and only
works if you fix it in the Registry. Explorer is supposed to
check settings for any previously opened window, but those
settings never get recorded properly, so it doesn't work.
And in all those years, MS never fixed it!

In Vista/7 a similar situation holds, but MS frivolously broke
backward compatibility, so the details are diferent from XP.

What *should* happen is that when you open a folder
and adjust it the way you want it, that should be recorded
somehwere like
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU\
and retrieved next time you open the folder. I've never tested it
on Win10 and MS are no longer making an effort to let you
configure things the way you like. But if it still works then
you should be able to set it manually and then have it work
when you click the link.

On 6/10/2022 9:41 PM, Mayayana wrote:
> "Peter Jason" <pj@jostle.com> wrote
>
> | The desktop shortcuts yield a folder with floating properties
> | regarding windows size and its Icon-size contents.
> |
> | Is there any way to fix PERMANTELY these properties?
> |
>
> You can set the properties provided by the IShellLink
> interface. The view options are not part of that. I'm not
> sure how it works in Win10.
>
> In XP the view options can
> be set per window but the system arrived broken and only
> works if you fix it in the Registry. Explorer is supposed to
> check settings for any previously opened window, but those
> settings never get recorded properly, so it doesn't work.
> And in all those years, MS never fixed it!
>
> In Vista/7 a similar situation holds, but MS frivolously broke
> backward compatibility, so the details are diferent from XP.
>
> What *should* happen is that when you open a folder
> and adjust it the way you want it, that should be recorded
> somehwere like
> HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU\
> and retrieved next time you open the folder. I've never tested it
> on Win10 and MS are no longer making an effort to let you
> configure things the way you like. But if it still works then
> you should be able to set it manually and then have it work
> when you click the link.

There's mention of a utility at the end of this, from Nir Sofer.
It's not likely to help in any practical way.

https://www.jeroentielen.nl/explaining-the-bagsbagmru-registry-tree-trying/

Paul

"Paul" <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote

| There's mention of a utility at the end of this, from Nir Sofer.
| It's not likely to help in any practical way.
| |
https://www.jeroentielen.nl/explaining-the-bagsbagmru-registry-tree-trying/
|

I didn't know about that. I wrote VBS utilities myself for
XP and 7, to automatically go through the "Bags" keys and
set your preferences, applying the same to all folders. It
looks like this utility goes through those keys (potentially
thousands).

It's ridiculously complex. Under BagMRU are keys corresponding
to top level folders, with potential subkeys. For example, BagMRU\0
will probably represent C:\. Under that will be keys for all C:\
fodlders opened. \0 value 0 will contain byte data indicating
the folder name. If you're lucky you'll find NodeSlot values there.

If not then you have to keep looking, at BagMRU\1 and so on.
Once you get NodeSlot, say it's 2327. You look for Bags\2327\Shell\.
That key will have the
settings for the window, with separate folder window specs
required for any screen size used. Explorer checks these, but
never saves them properly, so the system never works under
normal conditions! (At least on XP. I don't recall Win7 details
right now.)
The settings are also not really documented. I was able to figure
them out, in large part, because they're designed to mimic API
calls. For example, the FFlags value refers to the Windows API
FOLDERFLAGS enum. WFlags refers to WINDOWPLACEMENT
structure used in SetWindowPlacement. ShowCmd refers to
options in the ShowWindow function.

It looks like the Nirsof utlity is walking the subkeys in the two
main keys -- Bags and BagsMRU -- to provide a complete map
of which Bags NodeSlot values correspond to which folder names.
So in theory you could use that utility to set the values for one
specific folder, if you know what to set. But it's full of booby
traps. For example, View style is set by Mode value. 1-icons.
3-list. Etc. But it won't work unless you also set the view ID (Vid)
which is a GUID. Yet the two settings specify the same thing.

It's as though the whole thing were designed by a horny teenager
on a sugar high who happens to be fascinated with secret codes.
Perhaps Bill Gates assigned the task to one of his kids, saying, "I
can't stand the way people choose their own display style. See
what you can do to break the whole thing horribly. But give us
plausible deniability. Make sure that it could work, in theory."

Then the kid spent 3 months showing off to Dad... At least that's
my theory. No reasonable person could have designed this mess.

On 6/11/2022 8:32 AM, Mayayana wrote:
> "Paul" <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote
>
> No reasonable person could have designed this mess.

Indeed :-) And it can't even hold all the folders
as it's a cache (you could have 10000 folders and it
has only 7000 storage locations). You could expand it,
but I vaguely remember there was some limit, and you
couldn't just crank it to the skies and solve all problems
either.

I wonder if this is taught as a "lessons learned" in
some CS class ?

Microsoft sure is weird, when it comes to things it
won't fix. There are also things it can't fix, and
the clever part, is how they paper over the sharp edges
so they won't cut themselves (Windows Update). There's
a reason OSes are released twice a year, even when they
have no new content.

Paul

On Fri, 10 Jun 2022 at 21:41:02, Mayayana <mayayana@invalid.nospam>
wrote (my responses usually FOLLOW):
[]
> What *should* happen is that when you open a folder
>and adjust it the way you want it, that should be recorded
>somehwere like
> HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU\
>and retrieved next time you open the folder. I've never tested it
>on Win10 and MS are no longer making an effort to let you
>configure things the way you like. But if it still works then
>you should be able to set it manually and then have it work
> when you click the link.
>
Why the registry? I'd have thought it was the sort of thing desktop.ini
would be ideal for. (I thought it already remembered some aspects of
appearance.)
>
>
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Someone once said that scientists and prostitutes get paid for doing what they
enjoy. - Prof Stepehen Hawking in RT 2013/12/7-13

On 6/11/2022 10:39 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jun 2022 at 21:41:02, Mayayana <mayayana@invalid.nospam> wrote (my responses usually FOLLOW):
> []
>>  What *should* happen is that when you open a folder
>> and adjust it the way you want it, that should be recorded
>> somehwere like
>>  HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU\
>> and retrieved next time you open the folder. I've never tested it
>> on Win10 and MS are no longer making an effort to let you
>> configure things the way you like. But if it still works then
>> you should be able to set it manually and then have it work
>> when you click the link.
>>
> Why the registry? I'd have thought it was the sort of thing desktop.ini would be ideal for.
> (I thought it already remembered some aspects of appearance.)

You can open desktop.ini with Notepad.

I've never seen anything other than the usual shell32.dll "appearance"
directives in there.

It's almost as if multiple developers were involved and
it was "not my problem to solve" or something. You can see
lots of blown opportunities to fix it. Maybe "Raymond" (raymondcc)
knows the history of it.

Paul

On Sat, 11 Jun 2022 15:39:09 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

>On Fri, 10 Jun 2022 at 21:41:02, Mayayana <mayayana@invalid.nospam>
>wrote (my responses usually FOLLOW):
>[]
>> What *should* happen is that when you open a folder
>>and adjust it the way you want it, that should be recorded
>>somehwere like
>> HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU\
>>and retrieved next time you open the folder. I've never tested it
>>on Win10 and MS are no longer making an effort to let you
>>configure things the way you like. But if it still works then
>>you should be able to set it manually and then have it work
>> when you click the link.
>>
>Why the registry? I'd have thought it was the sort of thing desktop.ini
>would be ideal for. (I thought it already remembered some aspects of
>appearance.)
>>
>>

Hi' is this...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/how-to-customize-folders-with-desktop-ini
....what I should try?

"Peter Jason" <pj@jostle.com> wrote

| Hi' is this...
|
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/how-to-customize-folders-with-desktop-ini
| ...what I should try?

You can hope it's that easy. It isn't. Do you see any
entry on that page for display style? No. It's not there.
It's in the Registry. I already explained that, but you want
to imagine it can be a simple trick.

There are more esoteric entries possible in desktop.ini,
but not what you want.