Binary Fortress Software

Have you ever been navigating around in Windows Explorer in Vista, using details view, only to have it should show you a folder with the columns date taken and rating, instead of more useful columns like size and date modified? What a pain! Today, after at least of month of running Vista, I finally stumbled across a way of disabling this “feature”. Here’s the beans:

• Select the folder you would like to fix, or a top-level folder to fix a bunch of folders
• Right-click the folder and click Properties
• Click the Customize tab
• In the “Use this folder type as a template” drop-down select “All Items”
• You can also check off “Also apply this template to all subfolders” if you want to fix all the folders underneath as well

Click the Ok button, and voila, no more stupid columns! Now, if there was only a way to disable folder types and templates altogether…

Update: I found this handy article over on the MS forums. It shows how to do the above process for all folders, using regedit. I’ll briefly summarize.

• Delete this Key: [HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags] (this will remove your existing folder settings)
• Create this Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell]
• Create a string in the Key you just created named “FolderType” with a value of “NotSpecified”

Believe it or not, if you try this on your own computer I’m not responsible. Use at your own risk!