Classic Shell: Forum

Firstly, I don't know where I'd be without Classic Shell and I can't thank the devs enough for it's development.

However as I've only just recently lost my Windows XP box, I've not discovered the true horrors of modern Windows Explorer until this week when i started trying to use my Win 8 laptop seriously... some of Classic Explorer's features have overcome a few of my headaches, but auto-sorting is quite frankly destroying my ability to use it. I have relied on XP appending new files to the end of a list and not moving renames for over a decade and I can't handle its absence.

I read another thread that referred to disabling auto-arrange not being possible, but what about preventing explorer from moving newly added/downloaded/extracted files until the folder is closed or manually refreshed? Is this possible in any way?

Thank you.

You are absolutely right to call this auto-sorting a horror. It's one of the rudest behaviors for an OS to behave - to shuffle and scatter his files while he is still working on them with the folder still open. It violates good usability and accessibility. I can't imagine how making the items in a folder jump all over the folder to obey the sort order is more important than presenting them like XP did: existing items remain in place, new, renamed or modified items appear at the end until we press Refresh/F5. Then they get sorted. This is the desirable behavior of course. Not files jumping around while you are tracking the folder.

It is a complete nightmare, for me, it's impossible to use which is why I mainly keep my Windows XP PC around for file management. Too bad your XP PC died. I was so upset and furious about files not staying at the end in a list that I sent a million emails over the past 8 years to various Microsoft developers, even senior executives, appealing to their sense of reason and usability. I complained a LOT on Raymond Chen's blog (since he blogs about the Windows Shell). ALL IN VAIN. Microsoft doesn't care, nor do they understand how they turned a usable product into something completely unusable.

My blood still boils every time I am reminded of this auto sorting issue. I made a gazillion threads in Microsoft's forums and petitions asking them to create a simple hotfix to give an option to disable forced auto sorting in Explorer but they do not consider it a problem.

Auto sorting is so frustrating that I did try a lot of file managers just to get away from this shit but no file manager has all features and shell extension handlers of Explorer. It is for me, the number 1 serious usability issue with Explorer. It's so horrible but I've had to live with it all these years because of Microsoft's forced obsolescence of XP.

You can't imagine how much frustrated and angry I am at Microsoft for the forced auto sorting (constant F5) feature. Because it can be a trivial fix for them but they don't even care enough to change anything because they don't understand usability.

You must've probably seen my rants everywhere on the web of just how much I loathe this "feature". I posted at dozens of places over the web asking how to disable it.

I liked Explorer++ (a third party file manager) but for me, any other file manager is out of the question. I refuse to use third party apps for such a basic function as file management (and because all others are worse than Explorer including the commercial ones). They don't support the full shell extensions that Explorer does.

I tried using Process monitor too to observe if there was some registry key involved since it doesn't sort in the root of a local disk drive. Explorer also does not auto sort for me inside folders on removable USB flash drives or on network shares! It only auto sorts inside local folders. I swear if I found the person who coded this I will yell at him and take away his things while he's in the middle of working on something important. Raymond Chen also gave a stupid excuse on his blog about this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/arc ... 62286.aspx

Not giving the option to change such functionality is the typical behavior of Microsoft, why so many people dislike this company. Microsoft OS's are dumbed down further and further from version to version without any options to configure the system according to the user's wishes. They take away well designed behaviors due to carelessness or not having given much thought to the impact of the change. There's no excuse for not at least making a registry entry or Group Policy setting to disable the continuous live sorting. This annoying behavior is hard-coded into Explorer.

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Links to some general topics:

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● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Yeah now that you mention it, I did see your username and rants while frantically searching for a fix for this should-be-a-non-issue issue and I empathise with your pain and anger 100%. Believe me, I DO understand how frustrated and angry you are.

As you say this would be a trivial thing for them to fix and it leaves me utterly flabberghasted that they could ignore it so callously, I've known about auto-sorting for a while now but always thought in the back of my mind that "surely somene's made a registry tweak or hack to fix that, right?". How terrified I was to discover this was not the case, made all the worse by the flagrant disreguard for the end user tha MS is showing. I've often given Microsoft the benefit of the doubt but they've truly crossed a line with me over this.

I need to have files, when placed in a folder, while using list view, to stay appended to the end of the list until I manually refresh or switch folders. I collect a lot of files and do a lot of sorting with folders containing thousands of files and subfolders, windows insistance on auto-sorting anything the second it either enters a folder or is renamed is making me want to flip tables. I have literally years of file management as it is, and friggin' windows 7/8 are going to make that so frustrating that if there's no solution, i'm formatting an old HDD and dual booting to win XP.

I pray someone working on Classic Shell can eventually find a way to fix this for Classic Explorer. I was almost happy with Explorer++ but the forced full row highlights and slow animated scrolling were dealbreakers for me.

Exactly how I feel. I also have years of file management experience and I need items to stay at the end any time I extract, copy, rename or create new folder. Unfortunately, Classic Shell cannot fix this in Explorer. No one has been able to for the past many years since Vista came out.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

What bothers me the most about the full row selection issue in E++, is that I found threads pleading for the ability to turn it off... from four years ago.

Is it just a thing that developers of management software tend to ignore logical advice and simply think they know better?

I'm about to hook up a brand new, super powerful PC, and this explorer nonsense has almost completely soured what should be an exciting experience.

While internals of Windows such as graphics, networking, security, management did improve after XP, the user experience IMHO went downhill after Windows XP. Too many issues such as these:

Features removed in Windows Vista
Features removed in Windows 7

I, for the most part, made those lists. You can see that Explorer is seriously screwed up in Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 in many ways.

I don't even want to list Windows 10's issues. That is a seriously messed up user experience. Messed up beyond repair.

While Classic Shell tries its best to rev up the user experience, it can't fix everything. Microsoft screws up Windows in each release faster than Classic Shell can fix it with the sole developer, Ivo.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

I teach computer basics to older and inexperienced people, and I know all too well about the hell that is Windows 8, I have never had so much trouble explaining an OS like I have with Win 8 and it's broken, jarring, disorientating duct taped together mess of a UI... and god help you if you don't have a touch screen.

Quite frankly I couldn't use Win 8 on my own PC without Classic Shell. I hope Ivo knows just how much his efforts are appreciated.

I'm also interested in this feature

Any solution yet?

I understand why Microsoft include spyware in their OS. But I really don't understand what's their interest in ruining the user experience after Windows XP?

There is no solution. As Microsoft explained: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnew ... 0/?p=10713 they think this change "improves" the user experience. Raymond Chen even makes fun of the user: "Good luck trying to click on something when the contents of the folder are constantly changing." It looks like they hate their customers and laugh at the issues they are facing.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

I found something. If you have a drive on Win7 that is formatted FAT32, it will not do the AutoSort.
AutoSort only works on NTFS.

Yes it is very inconsistent but it can't be disabled in places where it annoys the most. Even worse, I discovered that Windows 10 Creators Update changed Explorer List View to again have FULL ROW select like Windows Vista.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.