Keeping folder view options

Hi,

I have just finished the joyous task of organising all my media, and I now have all my mp3's/wma's organised under My Music\Artist\Album\Track. I have placed a copy of album artwork in each folder called "folder.jpg" so that the thumbnail shows the album artwork (this is super neat, my girlfriend will even appreciate this bit!).

I would like to click on My Music from the desktop, be presented with all my beautiful folders thumbnails with album artwork, then double click click on an artist and of course get more pretty thumbnails THEN double click an album and be presented with a details view, so that I can see track length, bitrate genre etc (without having to click on the view tab every single time) And be able to reverse back out to the thumbnail view.

I have fiddled around with folder options and creating shortcuts for a few hours and can't seem to do this. XP always wants to browse the whole tree in one format only and remembers the last format used. XP's one saving grace is that it remembers the specific details selected in each individual folder, so that each folder (eg my pictures and my music) can have only relevant details (ie bitrate for music, file type for pictures) without having to change every time.

On a related to point, if I create a shortcut to My Music (which is on drive Z:\, not on my C drive incidently), I cannot expand My Music in the explorer pane, as the plus sign is missing. Plus signs are present for the other folders on Z drive. If I navigate to My Music via a shortcut to Z drive or a shortcut to an artist then explorer is fine. Whats up with that??

Of course if anyone can solve this for me I can apply the same principles to My Pictures (which does not have the same shortcut problem with explorer incidently), AND will be eternally greatfull. One of the main reasons for having a PC is to enjoy your media easily and all these extra clicks are annoying.... XP should be able to do this... right?

Again if anyone can get XP to stick to selected folder views in specific folders then PLEASE tell me

thanks in advance, Leftfield27

(PS XP SP2, athlon 2400+)

 

Okay, so you've gone to Folder Options and clicked on View and selected Thumbnails and saved it, then gone to Tools, Folder Options, View, and clicked Apply to All Folders? This should save it for you. Report back if this is what you've done.
Eric

 

wooooo-hooooo, after reading your reply, I went through several things, and under view > advanced settings there is a check box "remember each folders view settings" which was...... yep, unchecked, and guess what? Now that it's checked, everything works just like I wanted it too!! And I bet that checked is the default setting, and that many moons ago (must be years) I unchecked it for some unknown reason. Don't know how after all my fiddling I never noticed this box (like snow blindness, but when you spend too long on the pc fiddling. Man organising all my photos and mp3's took days... cant wait to walk away for a week and then come back and find everything categorised!)

Anyway, I have applied my details setting to ALL folders, and now I just have to go through all the folders that I want kept as thumbnails. And I guess that another checkbox "restore previous folder windows at logon" will mean that once I have everything just so, I can check this and it will lock all the windows in their current settings.. we'll see (if so I promise to remember that I have checked it before having more issues with folder view in another years time!) I'm down to "Black rebel motorcycle club" in terms of selecting thumbnails now!


Many many thanks
Leftfield 27

PS I still have the explorer pane issue. It occurs specifically when I open the explorer pane from My Music, that there is no plus sign next to the my music icon in the explorer pane. So I can't expand all my artists from here. And when I right click My Music, expand is greyed out.The other folders {which contain subfolders}at this level all have plus signs and can be expanded. If I open the explorer pane at any point other than from inside the My Music folder then I do not have this issue and I can click on the plus sign fine. This is really buggy huh!

If anyone can help I'd appreciate it, but if not I'm pretty stoked about having my windows back how I want them!

 

Ain't no easy way, ain't no easy way out! My 4 year old son just LOVES that song! We heard it while in the car, and both of us started pounding the dash board and singing along, and we've been hooked ever since!
Okay, back to business!
Glad to hear the problem is fixed. I don't know about the other problem you were refering to, but at least your folder views will be set for you. It may be some particular file that is damaged or something, I'm not sure.
As far as folder views, i have a problem of my own that I don't think is fixable: When I open files from another program, say Paint Shop Pro or Irfanview, and want to browse for pictures, the view is ALWAYS in list form, and I have to manually change it to thumbnail view each and every time. I mean, it doesn't even stay in thumbnail view from one picture to the next: If I load a picture into PSP or whatever, and then look for another picture, i have to immediatly change the view to thumbnail. I have tried to figure out how to set this to thumbnail so that it will stay, to no avail. Got any ideas?
Ain't no easy way, ain't no easy way out!
Take care,
Eric

 

No ideas on that sorry. I noticed that adobe photoshop elements always wants to show me thumbnails, even though for multiple saves its quicker not to generate all the thumbnails with EACH save.

On a simillar note,apparently the default no. of folder views kept in windows memory is only 400. I found a registry hack that increases this to 5000 (or any number you want). Your issue is probably not to do with that as apparently windows overwrites the oldest folder view when the limit is reached but anyway here goes:

Folder Memory Setting

Windows XP remember the view settings for the 400 most recently used folders by default. Once that figure has been reached, it will start overwriting the data of the oldest folder. Below you will find a registry tweak that will increase the number of folders from 400 to 5000. The information is stored in two registry keys:

*

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
*

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam

1. Open Windows Explorer and go to Tools>> Folder Options>> View>> Advanced Settings. Ensure that "Remember each folder's view settings" is checked.
2. Go to Start>> Run. Type in: regedit [Enter]
3. Navigate to: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
4. Right-click on "Shell", then follow to New>> Key>> DWORD Value.
5. Name this item "BagMRU Size" (without quotation marks) Ensure there is a space between BagMRU and Size.
6. Double-click BagMRU Size, give it a "Decimal" value of 5000, then click OK.
7. Now navigate to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam.
8. Create another BagMRU Size DWORD Value for "ShellNoRoam". Again, give it a "Decimal" value of 5000, then click OK.
9. Close the registry and reboot your computer.

Windows XP will now remember 5000 folder view settings instead of 400.

THIS IS NOT MY WORK, I found it on the internet! It hasn't damaged my PC but use at your own risk!! (heh you've always got system restore!)

My favourite song at the moent is "strange and beautiful" by aqualung incidently (a little more mellow)

leftfield 27
(PS If anyone knows how to fix my missing plus sign in windows explorer dont heitate to post!)

 

Halo,
I don't know what I did wrong, but that was the hardest to install app I've ever encountered. I unzipped, and it just kept wanting to install.....seemed I never got to the actual program. Anyway, I'm sure I did something wrong, and promptly gave up.
Eric

 

D'oh! I already have Tweak UI! I didn't realize it was a whole slew of programs....I need more coffee, I guess!