How to set folder view in explorer for all folders via registry

Question

I was going through a tutorial where I learned how to set the folder view of all the five folder templates on Windows 8 - General Items, Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos. The tutorial is fairly easy and we have to do it step by step which is tedious. But I was wondering whether we can create a registry file which, when patched, will turn all the five folder templates to the desired view thus eliminating the manual labor.

I personally love the TileView and would like to turn all the five folder view templates to use the TileView. Can somebody shed some light on this or provide a possible registry hack?

Answer 1

These are the registry manipulations that I know of. The following text is to be copied into a .reg file and be executed. I suggest creating first a system restore point and maybe exporting the registry keys below using regedit for safe-keeping.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;___________________________________________________
;Delete all view settings
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU]

;___________________________________________________
; Set default view to tiled
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell\{5C4F28B5-F869-4E84-8E60-F11DB97C5CC7}]
"LogicalViewMode"=dword:00000003

;___________________________________________________
; set folder type to not specific
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell]
"FolderType"="NotSpecified"

Other related registry keys that might need deleting may be found in this Microsoft article.

Answer 2

Here is a CMD script for setting the default to, "Detailed Folder View".

    @echo off

    REM Delete All View Settings
    REG delete "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags"
    REG delete "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU"

    REM Set Default View To Detailed
    REG add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell\{5C4F28B5-F869-4E84-8E60-F11DB97C5CC7}"
    REG add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell\{5C4F28B5-F869-4E84-8E60-F11DB97C5CC7}" /v FileOpenDialog /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000004 /f

    PAUSE

Answer 3

If you run "process Monitor" from "windows sysinternals" it will show you which registry entries are getting changed when you change view. You can then make a *.reg file that will import those settings. Test it beforehand as you can break things.