Explorer Views Disabled

[epic]

Has anyone seen anything like this before? Explorer Views Disabled on the toolbar and also within the context menu. I just noticed this about a week ago and now just looking to fix it.

Works fine within "My Computer" and any drive besides C:

Toolbar Views disabled (Greyed Out)... Only in the C drive. If I move to E, G, F... Views work fine.

Context menu also disabled... Views do not scroll open.

This is strange... registry corrupted? Can't find anything on google regarding it. However, found something about some unregistered services, but re-registering services did not resolve the problem.

[cluberti]

If you change the folder options so you can view hidden and system files (so no files are hidden), is there a .css, .html, or desktop.ini file hidden in the root?

[epic]

Nope.

Though when I enable Hidden and System Files, Views are again activated for Root, Windows, System and System32. If I disable Hidden and System Files, Root, Windows, System and System32 directories no longer allow displaying Views.

Edited September 6, 2007 by epic

[gosh]

i would check for a desktop.ini file, and i would disable the bagsmru. By default windows will save the settings of each folder under the bagsmru key i believe. A simple way to reset it is in folder options undo the option to save folder settings, click ok, then go back to folder options and enable the setting (tweakui lets you reset this too).

Otherwise i would suspect that theme or whatever shell modification youre using is causing your problem.

-gosh

[epic]

Well, I can safely say it's not the UI. The UI I have runs on 3 other workstations, so I have eliminated that issue. Again the problem just came up a couple weeks ago. I have no shell modifications.

I've compared the desktop.ini file with a working system and it's ok. At least I think it is... I never seen anything within the desktop.ini file in root or Windows\System.

Bagsmru/BagMRU are saved folder settings, but doesn't disable Views if the cache becomes full. The system just discards older settings and replaces them with new. Even a corrupt bagsmru/bagmru shouldn't disable the 'View' function.

From what I see in tweakui I don't have the ability to reset folder settings at least ver2.10 doesn't.

However, this is what I did...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer (Delete string: 'Shellstate') 
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState  (Delete string: 'Settings')

The following are what I delete every six months or so:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StreamsMRU
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\Bags

[epic]

Well, I don't know what to say. It's working fine now.

What happened... I don't know. I was going to make a small divx video to better represent the problem and possibly post it here. While doing so; I enabled/disabled hidden and system several times, then switched to Windows Classic theme then back to my modified theme and it's working flawlessly now.

I'd post the video, but it's over 400mb. Divx won't convert it, stating that the origianl video source is an invalid codec <shrug>

Oh well, thanks for the help.