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Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

October 02, 2007 • from Hood River, Oregon • 9 comments
On this page:

Somehow I managed to hose my Explorer's default context menu actions for folders when browsing in Explorer. The default action when clicking on a folder now is Search... instead of Explore which brings up the Search dialog when clicking on a folder Ugh.

A quick check in the registry comparing the director and shellfolder keys with another machine has yielded nothing different which is odd.

I'm not sure what caused this - in fact this may have been going on for a while since I haven't been using Explorer using Xplorer2 instead, so it's not crippling but in some cases the native Explorer still pops up for automated operations.

Anybody know how to get switch the order of items on the context menu? No luck for me with searching - too much noise coming up.

Posted in: Vista  

The Voices of Reason

Dennis
October 02, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

Hi Rick, maybe this is useful:

Please look under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell and make sure that (Default) for this key is set to string "none" (right now it is probably "find" or empty). After setting this value to "none" restart explorer.

Found it here:

http://207.46.236.188/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1689869&SiteID=1

HTH, Dennis
October 02, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

Dennis - ah yes, that was it. I had looked at that, but I missed that none is not the same as the value not being set. Mine was empty (ie. not set).
Dennis
October 02, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

Rick, glad that I could help.
Sergio Pereira
October 02, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

Which begs the question: why the heck "Search" is assumed when you leave it empty? Where did that come from? Only Raymond Chen can answer this ;)
October 02, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

@Sergio - I've given up asking why on anything having to do with Windows <s>. That way leads to madness...

Heck how about using none as a value as oposed to no value at all...

In this case this is definitely my own fault. I was screwing around with replacing Explorer completely for XPlorer2 and I mucked with that reg setting. I just missed empty and none as being different.
October 02, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

So, is us fixing your problem the same as clicking the "donate" link, Rick? :)
October 03, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

Heck yeah! I'll take a helpful comment over a donate click any day! <s>
totsugeki
October 13, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

It's amazing they haven't fixed this in Vista. In Windows XP when you add a new action to File Folder (for example "Add command prompt here"), the default action gets reset, rendering the Windows Explorer unusable (doubleclicking on a folder would "Search" it instead). The fix of course is adding "none" to the default of Directory->Shell registry entry.
JefDeBourges
November 09, 2007

# re: Vista Explorer Shell Context Menu Default Actions

A lot of thanks for you from France.
My friend google find you in first, only with this tags "explorer context menu directory search default"
This double-clic search was so ..... unsupportable ;)