Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Hawkmoon on August 17, 2013, 01:57:34 PM
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Is anyone running Windows Classic Shell with Windows 7? If so -- does it include a Windows Xp-style replacement for Windows Explorer? Tinkering with the wife's notebook (which is on Win7) I'm finding that I really REALLY loathe and detest the "new and improved" Windows Explorer. I liked the classic, dual-window, tree style of the old Windows Explorer.
This is just another example of "change" not necessarily equating with "improvement."
If Classic Shell doesn't provide a "classic" Windows Explorer, does anyone know of a freeware utility for Win7 that does serve as a replacement?
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I believe that is what I'm running on mine. I just opened explorer and it has the drives ect. down the left and then shows the folders on the right.
jim
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Classic Shell is more for W8. You can customize the view in W7 Explorer to show multiple panes.
Brad
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You can customize the view in W7 Explorer to show multiple panes.
How, pray tell? I don't see any way to make it work like the Xp Windows Explorer.
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How, pray tell? I don't see any way to make it work like the Xp Windows Explorer.
Organize => Layout
What's so great about the XP Explorer? I hated it, because I always had to tell it to show the folders on the side. Every time I wanted to use it. 7 does it by default.
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I guess my real problem is that I still remember MS-DOS and XTree, where you started with a drive, then a subdirectory tree under each drive. It was so easy that even I could understand it.
Now, with Windows, the default for "My Documents," My Pictures," "My Downloads," and a couple of other "Mys" is folders that are buried somewhere deep in Windows but which appear at the top of the Windows Explorer directory tree. I don't use those -- at least in part because I've found that sneaky and/or downright malicious programs use those default directories to deposit files I'd rather not deal with.
So I create my own "My Documents and "My Downloads" (etc.) folders directly under the root directory and ALL my documents, downloads, photos, etc. go into my own folders. With Windows Explorer in Win7 even more than in Xp, getting to my folders (which should be directly under the C:\ root directory) requires much scrolling and searching, because Windows does such a great job of hiding the fact that there actually IS a C:\ drive on the computer.
I want a directory tree utility that will ignore all the phantom directories that Windows creates, and just lets me work directly off a true directory tree of the drive -- like the much lamented XTree of days gone by.
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I guess my real problem is that I still remember MS-DOS and XTree, where you started with a drive, then a subdirectory tree under each drive. It was so easy that even I could understand it.
Now, with Windows, the default for "My Documents," My Pictures," "My Downloads," and a couple of other "Mys" is folders that are buried somewhere deep in Windows but which appear at the top of the Windows Explorer directory tree. I don't use those -- at least in part because I've found that sneaky and/or downright malicious programs use those default directories to deposit files I'd rather not deal with.
So I create my own "My Documents and "My Downloads" (etc.) folders directly under the root directory and ALL my documents, downloads, photos, etc. go into my own folders. With Windows Explorer in Win7 even more than in Xp, getting to my folders (which should be directly under the C:\ root directory) requires much scrolling and searching, because Windows does such a great job of hiding the fact that there actually IS a C:\ drive on the computer.
I want a directory tree utility that will ignore all the phantom directories that Windows creates, and just lets me work directly off a true directory tree of the drive -- like the much lamented XTree of days gone by.
midnight commander (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander). Unixy, but there is a port for Windows. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mcwin32/) I find it very useful.
You might want to peruse this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_managers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_managers)
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Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Folder Options > View > Advanced Settings > check "Show Drive Letters"
This labels the C:\ drive under My Computer.
The true "My Documents" is under C:\Users\<username>\Documents\.
C:\Users\<username>\ contains Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc. that were all under "My Documents" in WinXP.