Folders Explorer Bar Erroneously Highlighting A Folder on Click

My Windows 2000 has recently started doing something odd that I haven't told it to do. When I click to the left of a folder in the folders explorer bar (right pane) of Windows Explorer, it is highlighting the folder to the right of the click site. I'm not clicking ON the folder, nor on the plus sign to its left, but farther to the left. It didn't used to do this, which was better behavior, since I could click in the white space to the left of the folders to put focus on Windows Explorer without changing the folder it was displaying. Does anybody know what setting I can change or registry entry I can hack or any other way to make it go back to the way it worked before? Thanks in advance. - Tim.

 

One possibility I can think of (and there may well be others) is found in tools~folder options and the section at the bottom.

If you have selected to make a single click open a folder you have two sub options. One is to underline only when you point to an icon. The other is dependent on your browser settings. Try the "underline only ...." or select to require a double click to open.

 

I looked around the various Folder Options & changed a few things to see whether it would make any difference, but nothing did. I'm using classic Windows desktop & folders and using double-click to open folders. Thanks for the ideas, but I'm still wondering what controls this behavior. I appreciate your posting.

 

You are set up pretty much the way I am and my XP-pro SP1 system is behaving.

My quick-launch for WE is as follows and it opens a two-pane explorer window with none of the expanded junk. You might try it although I don't know exactly which piece would control the rude behavior yours is showing. /e might do the trick.

C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe /e,/select,c:\

 

Thanks for the post. I am using the following to invoke Windows Explorer:

%windir%\explorer.exe /n,/e,C:\_Hinds

I also tried the invocation you suggested (substituting WINNT for WINDOWS directory, since it is W2K instead of XP)

The spurious folder selection behavior is present in both cases. THere is something that has gotten set in the bowels of the OS, but I have no idea where it is. I'm hoping somebody will have run across this before or heard of it and a way to bring it back to the way it was before - that clicking to the left of a folder won't select that folder, just bring focus to Windows Explorer.

Thanks. - Tim.