My boss installed Tweak UI on his XP machine a few days ago and has now noticed that doouble-clicking a folder in the right-hand pane of Windows Explorer doesn’t open it, but launches a search window (this appears to be because Search is now the emboldened (default) option in the right-click context menu for that area.
I suspect this is related to the recent install of Tweak UI. He doesn’t think so. But anyway, anyone know where (short of manually hacking the registry) the setting is that controls this behaviour?
Open the registry editor, go to the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell, and change the “(Default)” value to “none” (or some other value that doesn’t exist as a subkey). I guess this is a registry “hack,” but it’s simple, and it works.
Oh, and the source of this problem is that Windows uses two different registry keys for directories; HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder contains information applied to all directories (“Folders”), including root directories of volumes and special shell folders such as My Computer, My Documents, Downloaded Program Files, etc. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory (“File Folders”) contains information that only pertains to what most people think of as folders: the directories that show up with folder icons in Explorer (and likewise, other special directories such as drives have their own special registry keys on the same level).
When Windows builds the context menu for a file folder, it combines the commands from both keys, with the \Directory keys taking precedence. But since the \Folder key is on a lower level, it contains the basic actions “explore” and “open.” If you try modifying the file association in Explorer (Tools>Folder Options>File Types), you can see that “File Folder” only has the “find” action by default. Windows’ll let you set the default action here (which is likely what happened in your scenario), which’ll unfortunately override the default action of \Folder. Setting the default action of \Directory to something meaningless will cause Windows to fall back on the default action of \Folder.