Windows Explorer Replacements: FreeCommander and Explorer++

In a previous post, I looked at replacements for Windows Explorer ("WinEx"), including especially FreeCommander.  The runner-up, at that point, was Explorer++.  Further experience with FreeCommander prompted me to take a closer look at Explorer++ after all.  This post provides further information on these two utilities.

As I used FreeCommander, I was surprised to find that a few right-click (context menu) options were missing.  For example, I often used LockHunter to find out why Windows was not letting me move or delete a certain file or folder.  But in FreeCommander, I was no longer seeing the context menu question, "What is locking this file?"  That option did continue to appear in Explorer++, as it had appeared in WinEx.  One possible explanation was that FreeCommander did not offer a 64-bit version, whereas Explorer++ did, and I was using the 64-bit version of LockHunter.

Another problem in both FreeCommander and Explorer++ was that I no longer had the option to create a new text file in a specified folder.  That option had been available in WinEx, as I recalled, via File > New > Text File.  I was pretty sure there was a way to create a new text file in FreeCommander.  It seemed to me that I had done so by accident, once or twice, while trying to do something else with a familiar command from WinEx.  But I was not seeing that option on the menu nor in the list of shortcuts, and likewise in Explorer++.  Workarounds in either program were to open a command window in the selected folder and type one of these options:

• copy con filename.txt Enter.  Then type the text.  End with F6 or Ctrl-Z.
• echo [a line of text to put into new text file] > filename.txt
• notepad filename.txt Enter

Both FreeCommander and Explorer++ made the command window available in multiple ways:  via Ctrl-D or menu pick in FreeCommander, via menu pick in Explorer++, and via toolbar icon in both programs.  Both also allowed the customized context menu option to "Open command window here," available through Ultimate Windows Tweaker.  But the toolbar itself, the most readily accessible of these options, was smaller and less obtrusive in Explorer++ because it could be made to fit on the same line (at the top of the screen) as the address bar and the list of drives, whereas FreeCommander insisted on putting the toolbar (if I opted to display it) on its own separate row, and with somewhat larger icons.

Unlike FreeCommander, it was not necessary to display a toolbar listing all drives in Explorer++, because the navigation pane already showed all drives, as in WinEx.  Also like WinEx, Explorer++ allowed me to customize the toolbar area by right-clicking on it.  By contrast, FreeCommander required me to go to Extras > Settings > View > Toolbar; and once there, I had to save changes to each segment of the toolbar separately.  Explorer++ offered more toolbar icons that I was likely to find useful, including Back, Forward, and Up buttons.

Explorer++ did not offer the dual panel option.  But in recent weeks, I had not found myself using that option very often in FreeCommander.  I tended to prefer to keep my windows to half-screen width (using the half-screen snap available in Windows 7 via WinKey - left- (or right-) arrow), and a half-screen was too narrow for many filenames.  Moving from one tab to another was an easier way to work among multiple folders.  Explorer++ (unlike FreeCommander) further aided that by offering the option of bookmarking folders.  A bookmark would not create a new tab; it would change the focused folder in the already focused tab.

Unlike FreeCommander, Explorer++ offered the option of being treated as a replacement for WinEx.  This meant that my Start Menu icon (and other menu picks in various programs) that previously would have opened a Windows Explorer session were now opening an Explorer++ session instead.  That option was available via Tools > Options > General tab > Default File Manager.  I still had the option of opening Windows Explorer by typing "explorer" in a command box; hence, batch commands designed to open WinEx to a particular folder would still do so.

FreeCommander appeared to offer more command-line options.  The options in Explorer++ appeared to be limited to (a) the possibility of listing multiple directories to open when Explorer++ started up, each opening in its own tab and (b) the possibility of opening virtual folders by using their names (e.g., explorer++.exe "control panel").  I did not think I would need the latter.  The former would be useful only when dealing with relatively short pathnames; Windows might balk at a command listing several long paths.  I obtained information about these options by typing "explorer++.exe /?" at the command prompt.  That seemed to work only in the folder where explorer++.exe was located.

Other points of comparison:  Both Explorer++ and FreeCommander seemed to remember their window positions better than WinEx had done.  Even more so than FreeCommander, Explorer++ displayed much more information onscreen than WinEx:  51 rows, in my configuration.  Regrettably, unlike FreeCommander, the status bar in Explorer++ did not state both the number of items selected and the total number of items in the folder.  Like FreeCommander, Explorer++ did not offer an Undo option, in case I had accidentally moved or deleted the wrong file or folder.  Using Explorer++ or FreeCommander did not stop the annoying "This folder is shared with other people" messages.

As these remarks probably suggest, I found myself gravitating toward Explorer++ shortly after I began using FreeCommander in earnest as my WinEx replacement.  There would surely be many more contrasts between the two.  But I wasn't sure how many of them I would detect, since by this point it seemed that I would mostly just be using Explorer++.

Windows 7: BSOD: PROCEXP111.SYS

My computer was sailing along, when suddenly I got a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).  The message began, oddly, with a sentence fragment:

to your computer.

PROCEXP111.SYS

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer.  If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed.  If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any Windows updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software.  Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing.  If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xFFFFFA8100043F20, 0x0000000000000000, 0xFFFFF880073B6DDD,0x0000000000000000)

*** PROCEXP111.SYS - Address FFFFF880073B6DDD base at FFFFF880073B5000, DateStamp 47194089

Collecting data for crash dump ...
Initializing disk for crash dump ...
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact your system admin or technical support group for further assistance.

I probably didn't need to type out all that information, but doing so provided a constructive outlet for frustration.  Besides, you never know what archaeologists of some future civilization will find absolutely crucial for understanding what they are digging out of the rocks.

This was the second time I'd gotten this BSOD, so evidently it was not going to be good enough to simply reboot and hope for the best.  To respond to the BSOD's first bit of advice, there wasn't any new hardware or software.  On the software side, I had recently restored a backup image of drive C that I had made more than a month earlier.  The first BSOD had occurred within the past few days, prior to the restoration.  In other words, I was suddenly getting BSODs on an install that had worked fairly well for weeks, with and also without software changes made during those weeks.

I did notice something atypical on the hardware side.  I had two different USB external drives connected.  That, itself, was not unusual, though it had not happened often.  The unusual part was that the system would not reboot without one of them being turned off.  It would get as far as giving me a message, which I think was "Loading Operating System," and then it would pause until I shut one of those USB drives off.

I wasn't actually doing anything in particular on the computer when the BSOD happened.  They had been up all night; I had just returned to the system in the morning; and at the moment I wasn't even using that computer; I was working on the other machine.  By the time I got to writing these notes, I didn't recall if I had even done anything on that computer.  Not much, anyway; nothing that would seem to have provoked the crash.

As I worked through this issue, I was guided by two posts I had written up a few months earlier, regarding a different STOP error.  One was a closer look at the "memory dump" concept mentioned toward the bottom of the BSOD; the other was a more general-purpose review of possibilities.  The memory dump investigation came to mind at this point because, on reboot, Windows 7 gave me a dialog that said, "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown.  Windows can check online for a solution to the problem."  I hadn't always gotten this dialog after a crash.  It dimly seemed that something I had changed about my system, during the process of working through the prior memory dump post, had given me this information; otherwise I had to use something like BlueScreenView to see it.  The dialog gave me an option, "View problem details."  I took that option and got some technical information that I wasn't eager to read.  It pointed me toward two "Files that help describe the problem."  I copied the addresses of those files (without the actual filename), pasted them into the address bar in Windows Explorer, and looked at them.  One was an XML file that, if I just double-clicked on it (or if I pasted the full path and filename in Windows Explorer), would open as code in Internet Explorer.  This file was arguably more readable in Firefox, but I didn't see anything particularly informative in it.  The other was a minidump file that I opened in BlueScreenView.  (In Notepad, it was semi-gibberish.)  Problem is, I hadn't fared too well in interpreting the page dump, last time around, and that was still the case this time.  Following that previous guidance, I did notice that this day's minidump, and also the one from the previous BSOD, did contain lines referring specifically to PROCEXP111.SYS, named in the BSOD.  But, as before, I didn't know what else, if anything, I could do with the memory dump information.

Two other things worth noting about this crash.  First, after the crash, Glary Registry Repair found an unusually large number of registry errors.  Since I ran Glary every day, I suspected these were a result, not a cause, of the crash.  Second, in recent days the system had been functioning extremely slowly.  This seemed to depend on the number of programs running, but not entirely.  In particular, I was having the previously noted slowdowns that I had attributed to resource-hog programs (especially GoodSync and BeyondCompare).  Sometimes I noticed that, when those programs were out of the picture, the system sped up considerably; at other times, there seemed to be a lingering effect where the system continued to seem screwed up.  This was what had prompted me to do the system restore.  In that previous post, I mentioned trying Process Hacker to put a speed limit on these resource-intensive programs; but I also noted that this had not seemed to make much difference.  I wasn't sure that there was anything particularly wrong about the Windows 7 installation as a whole, and certainly wasn't eager to reinstall from scratch.

A search led to the information -- surprising to me, but obvious once stated -- that PROCEXP111.SYS was related to Sysinternals Process Explorer.  I had just begun using Process Explorer, after several weeks of using Process Hacker, to control certain programs -- especially GoodSync -- that made excessive resource demands, to the point of making the computer unusable while they were running.  I hadn't noticed specifically whether the previous BSOD named PROCEXP111.SYS as the culprit; but since it had occurred just one day earlier, probably PROCEXP111.SYS was named in that one too.  I probably could have figured this out from the minidump, with sufficient time investment.

I wasn't sure how to interpret this information.  Generally, Microsoft Sysinternals tools like Process Explorer had seemed relatively stable.  It seemed possible that the crash named PROCEXP111.SYS because, unlike Process Hacker, Process Explorer was actually succeeding in putting the brakes on some overly grabby programs, and they didn't like it.  That is, it may have been a problem with Process Explorer, but it may instead have been a problem with these other programs -- that, basically, they would either run at their preferred speed or not at all.

I tried another search.  This led to the suggestion that I should be using a more recent version.  I hadn't checked, but now I saw that mine was v. 11.04, copyright 2007.  Oops.  Upon closer examination, I saw that they were now up to v. 15.13.  I downloaded and installed the upgrade.  I wasn't sure how long it might be until the next BSOD due to Process Explorer, so I decided to close this post at this point.

Windows 7: Cannot Create New Folder in Windows Explorer

I was working along in Windows 7 x64, when suddenly I discovered that I could not create a folder in Windows Explorer.  The method I usually used (File > New > Folder) no longer existed:  the Folder option was gone from the drop-down menu.

A search suggested that I was not the only one who had experienced this.  It seemed that suggested solutions had not reliably fixed the problem.  One such solution was to download and run a REG file, and then reboot, to correct a problem in the registry.  I was concerned that such files could make a large number of registry changes, though, with unpredictable consequences, and that not all of those changes might be applicable to all versions of Windows 7.  A more conservative option was to add just one line to the registry, in a sub-subkey that might or might not already be present.  Specifically, the Default value of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\New was supposed to be {D969A300-E7FF-11d0-A93B-00A0C90F2719}.  But mine already was.  So the conservative registry edit wasn't the answer.

Someone had said something about creating a new folder by using the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer.  I had rarely if ever used that approach; and now that I tried it, I saw that the only New thing I could create there was a Briefcase, that holdover from ye olde versions of Windows.  I had often used Ctrl+Shft+N to create new folders, but that wasn't working either.  I ran a search to see if there were other ways to create a new folder, at least to buy some time until maybe a solution would occur to me.  One suggestion was to click on the new folder icon on the taskbar.  I didn't have that, I hadn't seen it, and pinning Windows Explorer to the taskbar didn't create it.  I suspected that perhaps the writer meant "command bar" (i.e., near the top of the Windows Explorer window), not the taskbar.  I did still have a New Folder option up there, but it wasn't working.  It seemed that the basic functionality was gone, regardless of where it might have been available previously.

It took me a while to realize that, of course, I could still create folders by opening a command window and using the "md" command.  Example:  md "\Folder name" -- where quotation marks were necessary because the folder's name had a space in it.  The hard way to open a command window in the folder where I wanted to create a subfolder was to go to Start > Run > cmd, and then navigate to the correct place by using commands like C: or D: to change drives, and cd "\Folder name\Subfolder name" to get where I wanted to go.  The easy way to open a command window in any folder was to go into Ultimate Windows Tweaker > Additional Tweaks > Show "Open Command Window Here."

But back to the missing ways of creating a new folder within Windows Explorer.  There were the inevitable suggestions to search for malware; but I wasn't getting any other weirdness, so malware seemed unlikely.  One discussion brought to mind the possibility that a recent program installation was responsible.  I played around with uninstalling and rebooting, but nothing clear emerged.  It seemed that I would have to restore Windows from a previous version, install upgrades and new programs as needed or desired, and see if I could track more closely when (or if) the problem reappeared.  But before doing that, I went ahead and ran the REG file mentioned above, the one that made many registry changes.  But when I did, I got an error:

Registry Editor

Cannot import D:\Current\NewFolderFix.reg:  Not all data was successfully written to the registry.  Some keys are open by the system or other processes.

I closed all windows that were still open, right-clicked on various icons down in the system tray and closed those, and tried again.  Still no luck.  I went to Start > Run > taskmgr.exe > Processes tab, closed down some processes that looked safe, and tried again.  It still wasn't enough.  I rebooted into Safe Mode and tried running the REG file there.  Same error!  I ran a search for the error message, but found no solution in the several pages I examined.  One hypothesis:  the REG file was not suited for this particular machine and/or version of Windows.

Eventually I did figure out what caused the no-new-folders problem.  It was a program called Boot Deleter.  It had a nifty option to associate itself with Windows Explorer, so that I could just right-click on a file that resisted being deleted by other means, and indicate that I wanted that file to be deleted the next time the system rebooted.  But now that I was watching carefully, the ability to create a new folder disappeared as soon as I clicked on the Associate button.  No real surprise that it would be problematic:  the program had not been updated since 2005.  I clicked, now, on the button to kill the association, but that didn't solve the problem:  the ability to create a new folder was not restored, even after a reboot.

Due to an apparent malfunction or misconfiguration, I discovered at this point that System Restore was not keeping current backups.  So now I would apparently have to restore a drive image from more than a month earlier.  Not a terrible thing, but I wondered if there was another way.  I hadn't used Revo Uninstaller, to watch what was being done when Boot Deleter was installed.  Boot Deleter hadn't installed a desktop icon or otherwise been visible, so I couldn't use Revo's Hunter Mode to figure out the problem.  But I could try reinstalling Boot Deleter, with Revo running, and see if it would work now.  I saw, then, that I would need the pro version of Revo for this, and I wasn't ready to spring for that.

Another possibility was to use Process Monitor (PM), which was said to track attempts to modify the registry.  I opened PM, maximized it, spread out its columns so that I could see what was happening, and went up to its toolbar.  I hovered over items to get their tooltips.  At the right end of the toolbar, I turned off a couple of items, so that I was monitoring only file and registry activity.  I went to Boot Deleter and got ready to install it again.  Back at the PM toolbar, I clicked on the Clear button, so that I wouldn't have too long a history to work through.  (I could also have used Ctrl-X to clear.)  Then I went back to Boot Deleter and installed it.  Then, back at PM, I clicked on the Capture button (Ctrl-E).  Then the Filter button (Ctrl-L).  In the Process Monitor Filter dialog, I deselected all of the items listed (e.g., "Process Name is Procmon.exe ... Exclude.").  In the first drop-down box at the top, I selected Process Name.  The second box said "is."  In the third drop-down box, I selected BootDeleter.exe.  The fourth box said "Include."  I clicked Add.  This put my BootDeleter.exe item in the list as the only checked item.  I clicked Apply > OK.  The status bar at the bottom of the PM screen told me that I now had a list of 2,345 events.  I went to File > Save.  "Events displayed using current filter" was already selected.  I changed the format to CSV and specified an output path and CSV filetype > OK.  In Windows Explorer, I double-clicked on that resulting file ("Process Monitor 01.csv"), and manipulated the file in Excel.  Basically, I filtered it for the items that looked like file or registry changes that would need to be reversed.  I wound up with a list of several hundred items.  Clearly, this was not going to be a matter of a few registry keys needing to be undone.  I decided it would be easier to restore the previous image, and catch up to the present that way.

Instant File Find: Acceptable, While We Await a Windows 7 Version of AvaFind

I had installed Windows 7.  I was now seeing that AvaFind was not compatible with it.  It was crashing frequently.  It was time to find a replacement.  This post describes my efforts in that regard.

AvaFind was a fast file finder.  It searched only file names.  To search file contents, I used Copernic.  Ava Find had been remarkably stable.  I would call it up by a Shift-Esc hotkey combination, type in the name of a file (with wildcards, if I wished), and see the results.  Very fast.  If I wanted to delete, move, or otherwise work with those files, no problem:  in the paid version, it could do that.  It would give me an option to open up the Windows Explorer right-click context menu, and anything that I could do in Explorer, I could do with these files that I had just found.  So this was essentially what I wanted to replace.

I spent some time looking over alternatives.  There were not many that seemed to provide these features.  After a number of searches, I came up with a few contenders.  One was Everything, which sounded like a fast file finder, but did not seem to have Explorer file handling features.  Another was Locate32, which sounded about the same.  I put in a request for AvaFind-like features there.  The third contender, and the one I decided to try, was Instant File Find (IFF).  Like AvaFind, it offered free and paid versions; and like AvaFind, its paid version included Windows Explorer actions.  It looked like it actually might be better than AvaFind, insofar as it offered an Advanced Search option.  (Honorable mention to Find and Run Robot (FARR), whose purpose was largely to find and run programs very quickly, without having to mouse around in the Start Menu.)  IFF would cost $29.95 (normally $39.95 - Buy Now!) if I decided to get the paid version.

IFF did its file searching fast enough.  I noticed some features right away.  I liked its less cluttered interface.  I had never known what the AvaFind Scout Bot was.  A useful feature:  IFF had a drop-down box where I could quickly recall and re-run previous searches.  It also would apparently let me save searches, but only in the paid version.  Advanced Search was another paid feature, and so was Search Network Drive and those Windows Explorer features.  The Help File said there was a free 21-day trial period where I could use most features, but apparently that was no longer the case.  I sent them an email (no forum on their website) to ask about that, and also to find out whether there was a hotkey, like AvaFind's Shift-Esc, that I could use to start the program.  It turned out that Shift-Esc was the hotkey, but if AvaFind was loaded first, it would commandeer that hotkey.  In other words, that problem disappeared when I disabled AvaFind.

After a week of using IFF, I felt that I would still have preferred to have a version of AvaFind that would work on Win7.  A minor problem, and possibly not the fault of the programmer, was that I could not persuade the AvaFind window to take any shape other than the original, which was too tight to see long pathnames.  Another drawback, not quite as minor, was that, at least sometimes, it would not search while it was refreshing its index.  Yes, I wanted accurate search results, but sometimes I just wanted to know if a file by a certain name existed somewhere on my drive.  I was more bothered by not being able to set how frequently the program would refresh its index.  Sometimes I would be moving some files around, and I would know I had recently seen one that I was now looking for.  AvaFind would have found it, with its index refreshing every hour, but sometimes IFF did not.  (I could manually refresh the cache, but during that process IFF would not find anythin gat all.)  IFF, unlike AvaFind, did not see my network drives.  One feature that I really missed was AvaFind's ability to rename files that I had found.

I had always been amazed that AvaFind had not taken over the world.  It was a great utility, for those who were running pre-Win7 operating systems.  It was too bad that its developer vanished.  I hoped he was OK, wherever he was.  In the meantime, my tentative decision was to buy IFF.  It was a good product, just not as good as AvaFind.  But perhaps its developer would make it as good as AvaFind, or even better.

A Tweaked Windows 7 Installation: Second Try

I was installing Windows 7.  I had spent days exploring various possibilities.  Unfortunately, I had also acquired a networking problem for which a new installation seemed to be the only solution.  This post consolidates what I learned in the first installation attempt, and adds some new items.  As in that previous post, some of these items were recorded after the fact, and may not look or function precisely as described here.  For example, settings may already have been changed by the time they come into focus in the sequence described here.
My first step was to delete all accounts except the Administrator and the Guest.  The changes described here thus had to be made only to the Administrator account.  I also allowed Windows and other updates whenever they seemed to be ready for installation.  In Windows Update, after installing desired updates, I highlighted all unwanted updates (e.g., foreign language packs) > right-click > "Hide updates."

I made some preliminary adjustments in Windows Explorer.  These included Organize > Layout > Details pane, right-click on the menu and turn on Classic Explorer Bar, and also in Windows Explorer, in Tools > Folder Options.  Also, in my early usage of Internet Explorer, I allowed it to turn on AutoComplete (Tools > Content > Settings).  (This did not fix the perennial problem of IE not remembering passwords, by the way.)

During the first installation, I organized programs that I was installing (including drivers, batch files, and other materials) into folders.  I numbered the folders (01, 02, 03 ...) so that they would appear in the correct sequential order in Windows Explorer.  The contents of all of these folders had to be checked to make sure that I was using programs and other materials designed for Windows 7.  Some but not all of my Windows XP programs fit that description.  The first several folders, at this point, had these names:

01 Motherboard Drivers and Utilities
02 Programs Needed at Start
03 Other Installation & Tweaking Programs
04 Broadly Useful Programs
05 Experimental and New Programs

The contents of folder 05 are addressed in later posts.  This post goes up through folder 04.  In other words, this post describes what I installed, and how I adjusted it, to set up a general-purpose system, mostly using software that I had used previously.

Folder 01 contained several subfolders, likewise numbered sequentially.  The first contained drivers that I would need to load during the Windows 7 installation process if I wished to install Win7 in a RAID array.  I had decided against that.  The second subfolder contained drivers to be installed after the basic Windows 7 installation.  I installed these, and continued on to install motherboard utilities.

Folder 02 contained a few items that I found very useful during the installation and setup process:

• Antivirus.  I was currently using just Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender, for convenience during installation.
• AvaFind Professional.  A program that quickly finds filenames.  Some program of this sort was invaluable for locating files needed for various purposes during installation and tweaking.
• 7-Zip.  Programs to be installed, that had to be downloaded, often came in zipped format.  Windows provided an unzipping feature, but this one was more versatile.
• Google Chrome.  I found it easier to use Chrome, rather than Internet Explorer, to search for installation-related information.  Turning on Chrome's sync feature minimized the time needed to configure this tool.  Basically, my list of favored extensions was available as soon as I installed Chrome.
• Bullzip PDF Printer.  There were a few items that I wanted to save as PDF during this process.
• Router driver and utilities.

Folder 03 contained hardware drivers, registry edit (.reg) and batch (.bat) files used to configure the system, and other programs needed for the basic installation and tweaking process.  The previous post describes most of the materials in this folder.  I have added links in the following list to those that are not mentioned in that previous post.  For the most part, I ran straight through these materials, installing them all after the initial Windows installation.  I installed the programs before turning to the manual tweaking tasks (below) because these programs would take care of some of those tasks automatically.  The programs I installed at this point, in approximately this order, were as follows:

• Printer drivers and utility software.
• Win7NewInstall.bat and Win7RegTweaks.reg.  These contained a collection of registry tweaks and other adjustments and customizations.
• Classic Shell, to change the look and some functions of the Windows 7 Start Menu and Windows Explorer to what I considered the more efficient form of Windows XP.  I went ahead and configured these items at this point.
• Somehow Windows Live Essentials came up, asking how much of Live Essentials I wanted to install.  I chose Messenger, Movie Maker, and Windows Live Mesh.
• The first time I tried to play an audio file, Windows Media Player popped up and had to be configured.
• IOBit Smart Defrag.  I had used this defragmenter for several years and had no problems with it.
• LockHunter.  This was experimental, for me -- a replacement for Unlocker.  Preliminarily, it appeared less functional.  I wanted integration with the Windows Explorer context menu.  I hoped for a Win7-compatible update of Unlocker.
• QuickTime.  It appeared that several other programs depended upon this program being installed.

After installing those necessary programs, I changed the following items from the default in Ultimate Windows Tweaker (clicking Apply after each bullet point):

• Personalization:  Hide detail pane.
• User Accounts & UAC:  Enable admin approval mode for the built-in administrator account.
• System Performance:  Enable support for 4GB of RAM on 32-bit Windows OS.  Disable Tablet PC Input service.
• Network Tweaks:  Disable auto-discovery of media contents in shared network by Windows Media Player.
• Internet Explorer:  Uncheck "Open first home page when IE starts."  Uncheck "Disable IE check for updates."  Uncheck "Notify when download completes."
• Additional Tweaks:  Uncheck "Show 'Search ...'"  Show "Move To Folder..."  Remove "-Shortcut" suffix for new shortcuts.
• It appeared, in some cases, that Ultimate Windows Tweaker was not always effective.  I installed TweakNow PowerPack 2010 and used it to deselect drives not to be displayed in Windows Explorer (in my case, floppy drive A). This setting was in Windows Secret > Windows Explorer.

After restarting the machine, I made changes in Control Panel.  These, too, follow but also modify the steps described in the previous post.  Some (Action Center, Administrative Tools) had already been done in previous steps (e.g., while installing updates or resizing partitions)  Auto-Play was already set the way I wanted, which was suspicious:  had I made more changes to the two-week-old image on which I was doing these tweaks than I had recorded?  Likewise for Personalization (Windows Classic theme. Window Color > Adjust at least Active Title Bar, Inactive Title Bar, Menu, and Desktop).  Regarding Backup and Restore, I was still using Acronis as a fail-safe, but was also using the Win7 system image option.  I would make both after completing some more tweaks.  For regular data backup, I was still using Beyond Compare, which I found was pretty good at showing me when I had nested files too deep. 

Control Panel options still requiring attention were as follows:

• Internet Options: I went into General tab > Tabs > Settings > adjust as desired. I went to Security tab > Custom Level > Scripting section (near the bottom) > Allow programmatic clipboard access > Enable. I saved and closed those.  I went into Content tab > Autocomplete Settings > turn on.  Then I navigated to YouTube.com and played a video, so as to trigger the process of installing Adobe Flash Player.
• Power Options: Show additional plans > High performance > Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings > Change settings that are currently unavailable > High performance > change individual items as desired > Apply.
• Programs and Features: Turn Windows features on or off > Make sure Indexing Service is off.
• System: Windows Activation > Activate. System Protection > Hardware tab > Device Manager > verify no yellow-circle exclamation marks. Hardware tab > Device Installation Settings > Yes, do this automatically. Advanced tab > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Change > Uncheck automatically manage paging file size for all drivers; instead, set a paging file of 4000-8000 MB (or more) on each hard drive (not on each partition). System Protection tab > Configure > adjust Disk Space Usage as needed.
• Taskbar and Start Menu: Start Menu tab > Customize. Adjust various items to taste. Turn on Run command. Save and close.

Additional tweaks:

•  I now had a more or less complete approach for developing a custom-organized Start Menu on a drive other than drive C, where it could be shared with other computers and would survive a Windows crash and reinstallation.  As described in the previous post, Win7NewInstall.bat, used in the previous installation, had created a so-called God Mode folder on this Start Menu.  That folder was still there, so I did not need to recreate it.  I just needed to get around to distributing, across my Start Menu, the shortcuts to every Windows function that I had created via the God Mode folder.
• As advised, I used Resource Hacker to open C:\Windows\System32\Shellstyle.dll.  There, I went into UIFILE > 1 > 1033.  I searched (Ctrl-F) for the line that said, <style resid="FolderBandStyle">.  I inserted this code after that line:  <if mousefocused="false" mousewithin="false"><Element padding="rect(0rp,0rp,0rp,-28rp)"/></if>.  I left it conditional, able to come up on a mouseover, because I wasn't sure if I might need it in the future.  Later, if possible, I would make this change permanent, without the mouseover option, by inserting only the "Element padding" portion of the line.  With this change made, I clicked on the Compile Script button, there in Resource Hacker. Then I saved the file as Shellstyle.dll in a backup location, so I would not have to do this again.  I right-clicked on C:\Windows\System32\Shellstyle.dll and took ownership, using one of the tweaks installed above.  I copied that backup Shellstyle.dll to C:\Windows\System32, overwriting the existing Shellstyle.dll there.  Then I logged off and back on to see the change.
• Shut off an annoying question. On the Desktop, right-click Recycle Bin > Propeties > deselect "Display delete confirmation dialog."
• To make Windows remember size and position of a window, I found two solutions mentioned near the end of a very long thread on the subject.  What worked for me:  right-click on the title (top) bar of a Window.  Choose "Size."  Drag the window and its edges around.  Even if it's exactly where you want it, move it somewhere else and then back, all in one motion.  Then click on the top right X to close the window.  If that technique hadn't worked, I would have gone on to try ShellFolderFix.
• Every time I started the system, Windows Defender would give me the message, "This program is turned off."  Someone said Windows Defender was unnecessary if I was running Microsoft Security Essentials.  Posts in that thread suggested many remedies, almost none of which worked for the original poster.  A post about two-thirds of the way down that thread offered a solution that worked for me.  I added that solution to Win7NewInstall.bat.
• Somehow, a Boot folder wound up on drive D.  A thread suggested that (as administrator) I type "bcd c:\Windows /s C:" to get that folder onto drive C with the other system folders.  Before doing that, I made a System Restore point.  To do that, I went into Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings > System Protection tab > Create a restore point.  Then I went ahead with that bcdboot command.  It said, "Boot files successfully created."  I looked at C and, sure enough, there was now a Boot folder there too.  (Maybe there had been before; I hadn't thought to look.)  Now, as advised, to delete that hopefully unnecessary Boot folder, I tried steps through the user interface (taking ownership of the folder), but those did not work.  Using another approach, I went to Start > "cmd" and typed these commands (running as Administrator):

Finally, folder 04.  These were the programs, mostly familiar but some new, that I installed to set up a complete system.  These were as follows:

• Adobe Acrobat.  I already had a copy, else I would have considered checking out some of the steadily more competent freeware alternatives.
• Adobe Premiere Elements.  I found that a basic ability to do some video editing was valuable for many purposes.
• CamStudio.  I was not yet finding good freeware alternatives.  CamStudio, at this point, still did not have a Windows 7 compatible version, so this was a tentative solution.  I was considering buying a copy of Debut, which had done screen video capture pretty well during my trial use of it.  I also installed Jing as an alternative, though it seemed to me that I had already tried and rejected it once if not twice.  When I rebooted, there was suddenly an unexplained, virus-looking dialog offering to let me "Enter or Create a Screencast Account."  When I figured out that this was Jing's doing, I went ahead and created the account.
• CoolEdit.  An old audio-editing program that still had capabilities and familiarity.
• Copernic Desktop Search.  My search had led to this as the best desktop search option, much more useful than Google Desktop Search had been.
• Gadgets.  These were new in Vista and Win7.  Mine were not currently arranging properly on the desktop.  I was not sure how much I would use them.
• Microsoft Office 2003.  I had OpenOffice Portable already in place as an alternative.
• Shortcuts to copy into C:\Windows.  As noted in a comment following a previous post, I had discovered that putting shortcuts to programs would make them available for easy reference in batch files.
• Aqua Deskperience.  I had bought this for capturing text from a region onscreen.  There were freeware alternatives that did the same thing now.
• EditPadLite.  A Notepad alternative.  After installing this, I decided to rely on Notepad++ instead.
• File Checksum Integrity Verifier.
• Firefox.  The portable version had not been reliable for me.
• Freeware PDF Unlocker.  Drag a PDF onto this desktop icon to make a non-locked copy, so that you can add highlights and comments.
• Glary Registry Repair.  My Windows 7 replacement for Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal.  A registry cleaner that I planned to run each time the system started.  I put a shortcut to it in the Start Menu's Startup folder.
• Google Earth.
• Handbrake.  For video conversions.
• iRotate.  Turn the monitor on its side for improved screen captures in some cases.
• Oxelon Media Converter.  Valuable context-menu addition for all sorts of conversions (e.g., getting audio out of a video file).
• Paradox dBase Viewer.  For extracting data from old Paradox for DOS files.
• Skype.
• TClockEx.  For giving me date and time in the system tray.  I didn't have those because I was using Win7's classic desktop skin.
• Thunderbird.  For email.  Again, the portable version wasn't up to the job.
• Total Commander (above).  I wasn't actually using it much, though.  I had largely managed, by this point, to tweak Windows Explorer to suit me.

Note that these were in addition to portable (i.e., standalone) applications that I already had in place and was using for many purposes.  Those were incorporated into my customized Start Menu (above) and therefore did not need to be reinstalled, or even relinked in my Start Menu, at this point.

This gave me a complete working Windows 7 installation.  It represented a great improvement over the previous try.  I was sure there would be further ways to streamline it in future installations.

takeown /f D:\Boot /r /d y
icacls D:\Boot /grant administrators:F /T

Windows Explorer Fails to Retain Multiple File Selection

I was installing Windows XP SP3.  I had just installed some basic utilities, mostly related to the user interface.  After doing so, I noticed that Windows Explorer would allow me to highlight files and folders, but when I right-clicked and hit Cut (or when I used Ctrl-X), the folder icons would fade for a second, as they would typically do when files were being cut and pasted; but then the fading effect would end.  And if I went to another folder and tried to paste, there was no right-click (context menu) paste option.  I could move them only by dragging them to that other folder.  The choice of view (e.g., Detail view, Icon view) did not seem to make a difference.  The problem occurred in a variety of folders.

I went back to a previous backup of this Windows installation and started over, installing those same programs again.  This time, the fading effect ended as before, but now cutting and pasting did work properly.

I did a search, initially, on the problem of being unable to select multiple files.  That led to a post discussing some solutions.  It looked like Vista users were having this problem too.  But when the problem recurred in the different form just described, I opted to try a different search.  There were no obvious solutions on the first several pages of that.  So I decided to work back through the programs I had recently installed, to see if one of them was responsible.

What I found was that the effect of the offending program was not immediate.  The problem didn't appear until after I had rebooted.  This was why I did not notice it right away, and just kept on installing other stuff.  So I installed them one at a time, rebooting and testing after each one.  This procedure established that the problem was due to the M8 Free Clipboard program.  I proceeded with installing my other programs.  The problem did not recur.