Here's my problem...I have different folders that I put a whole bunch of pictures in and every time I open the folder up the pictures always open up in a slide show format. I have to always right click in the folder and select either thumbnails or tiles. Is there any way that I can set up all my folders to either open up in thumbnails or tiles automatically? I'm running Windows XP.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
by default windows xp only saves the folder settings for only 50 folders, to fix your problem you need to modified your registry as follows, I do this on all my windows xp installations. Anytime you work on your your registry, it's a good idea to back it up (creating a system restore point or something similar).
Change folders settings for Windows XP so that it will remember a larger number of folder settings.
Regedit:
1) Run Regedit
2) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
a. If not present, skip to #8.
3) Delete subkey BagMRU
4) Delete subkey Bags
5) Look for ?BagMRU Size? key (space between words)
6) If not present, create new DWORD value from the edit menu, called ?BagMRU size?.
7) Choose Decimal for value, and enter the number you wish to save (e.g. 50000)
8) Navigate to key ShellNoRoam? (should be right under previous Shell key), and repeat steps 3 through 7
sounds harder than it is, but works good. this is the only way that I know to fix this problem.
I had this problem also. I assume from what you said that you know how to set the view for an individual file.
Open one of the files that has the view you want.
Then go to "Tools" at the top of the page.
Select "Folder Options"
On the "Folder Options" screen go to "View" tab.
There you will see at the top a button "Apply to All Folders" . Press that and then a confirmation screen "Yes".
And that view will apply to all folders next time you open them.
I tried that fix before, but once you reach the default limit folders settings that can be saved, all folders will revert to the default large icon settings. The only thing that works is the registry modification.
I am not disagreeing with what you say, as it seems you know more about this than me.
But, either I am not completely understanding you on this or I am not having that problem. I am sure I have over 50 folders on my computer and the new ones added still show the tiles view that I selected as above.
Well, if I do see a problem in the future, then I can use your registry modification.
This page at Microsoft support says the issue was fixed with service pack 2. I checked because after looking at my computer and external HD, I saw that I had more than 400 folders.
I have been using windows xp pro sp2 for a while, and I have had to use registry editing on it. I did do some checks, and did find out that the default setting is now 5000 instead of 400 (I checked it on a new installation of windows xp sp2). From my expierence if you use the same computer regularly without reinstalling windows at some point, you will eventually reach the 5000 folder limit. I have my registry set to 50,000
without any slowdown on my system. On my original post I was wrong on the default being 50 (actually it was 400"sp1" and now 5000"sp2").
