Unable to set as default file manager

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Ibaudia
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Mar 16, 2018 4:59 am

Unable to set as default file manager

Post by Ibaudia »

Whenever I try to set Explorer++ as my default file manager it says that there was an error, and asks me to check my administrator privileges. I'm positive that I have permissions, but I'm not tech savvy enough to tell what could be going wrong. Is this a common problem and does anyone have a solution?

Running Windows 10 v 1709 btw. Thanks in advance.
donkey
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2018 8:54 pm

Re: Unable to set as default file manager

Post by donkey »

I have the same problem. How to set Explorer++ as default in Windows 10? Sometimes it's fine, but occasionally Windows Explorer appears. E.g. when I store a NotePad file, I am harassed by WE.
BuddhaNature
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2018 10:00 am

Re: Unable to set as default file manager

Post by BuddhaNature »

Ibaudia wrote: Fri Mar 16, 2018 5:10 am Whenever I try to set Explorer++ as my default file manager it says that there was an error, and asks me to check my administrator privileges
To be able to make the setting you want you need to launch an instance of Explorer++ as administrator. To do that right-click on Explorer++.exe and select Run as administrator. When that Explorer++ window opens make the setting you want to make from within that window.

I should say that I tried that setting myself and it didn't work. That said, I'm on Win7 -- your mileage might be better with it on Win10.

All above said, I did find a way to automatically open Explorer++ windows by using the hotkey combination Win+E. If you find that the setting that you want to make doesn't work and would like to try the hotkey method let me know and I'll post instructions up here for you.
Edgar5
Posts: 63
Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2017 7:22 am

Re: Unable to set as default file manager

Post by Edgar5 »

I've added Explorer++ to the right click context menu for Folder and Links-to-Folder icons. This allows me to double click on an icon to open it in Windows Explorer and use the context menu to open it in Explorer++.
BuddhaNature
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2018 10:00 am

Re: Unable to set as default file manager

Post by BuddhaNature »

Edgar5 wrote: Mon Aug 20, 2018 2:24 am I've added Explorer++ to the right click context menu for Folder and Links-to-Folder icons.
Yes! That sounds really useful. Could you please explain, step by step, how people can set that up for themselves?

EDIT: It's okay I found out how to do it and tested it. Works okay but it seems that Explorer++ launched in that way doesn't remember my previous settings for column widths and also doesn't show the "Extension" column at all. So with every launch of Explorer++ by this "context menu" means I have to reset the columns arrangement from scratch. So that makes it not useful for me.

For anyone interested in how to do this it's explained in detail here: How to Add Any Application Shortcut to Windows Explorer’s Context Menu
BuddhaNature
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2018 10:00 am

Re: Unable to set as default file manager

Post by BuddhaNature »

I managed to work out what was going wrong with, and found a solution to, Explorer++ not remembering my preferred column arrangements and widths when it is launched using the right-click context menu (first mentioned by Edgar5). Should say that I'm using Explorer++ as a portable, and it is getting it's configuration data from the "config.xml" file in the same directory as Explorer++.exe, so that is important for the description of the solution that follows.

What was happening with Explorer++ not remembering the settings is that in the xml file there are two places where these settings are arranged. The first place is in the xml section titled "<Columns>". The second place is in the xml section titled "<DefaultColumns>". If you launch Explorer++ directly, or via a shortcut you created then, it seems, Explorer++ will read its column arrangement and column widths from the section in the xml section titled <Columns>.

However, if Explorer++ gets launched via the right-click context menu entry it seems (for whatever reason) that it reads the column arrangement and column widths from the xml section <DefaultColumns>. (This seems to me to be a possible bug in Explorer++ -- but I'm not sure on that score.) And, if the information there doesn't match the entries in <Columns> then what you get is something that looks different from the previous time you launched Explorer++ directly or from a shortcut.

On inspecting the <DefaultColumns> section of the xml you can see that by default Explorer++ xml sets all column widths to "150". (This column width is replicated in <Columns> unless of course you altered that yourself when working in Explorer++.)

So as an example from my own setup the <Columns> data (in part) looks like this:

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<Columns>
	<Column name="Generic" Name="yes" Name_Width="312" Extension="yes" Extension_Width="41" Size="yes" Size_Width="68" DateModified="yes" DateModified_Width="150" Type="yes" Type_Width="150"
And the <DefaultColumns> data (in part) looks like this:

Code: Select all

<DefaultColumns>
	<Column name="Generic" Name="yes" Name_Width="150" Extension="yes" Extension_Width="150" Size="yes" Size_Width="150" DateModified="yes" DateModified_Width="150" Type="yes" Type_Width="150"
As you can see if Explorer++ is launched via the right-click context menu then you get something that is different in appearance from what it would look like if you launched directly or via a shortcut. So the solution to this is just to directly edit the xml file, in Notepad, or some other plain-text editor. So you would edit the <DefaultColumns> data to look like this:

Code: Select all

<DefaultColumns>
	<Column name="Generic" Name="yes" Name_Width="312" Extension="yes" Extension_Width="41" Size="yes" Size_Width="68" DateModified="yes" DateModified_Width="150" Type="yes" Type_Width="150"
As you can see what I've done is make the widths for the first three entries match the widths set for them in the <Columns> data fields. Once you've made that change save the xml file. Now when you launch Explorer++ via the right-click context menu you will get and Explorer++ display that matches the display you normally like to use. (Hope I've explained all that in way that is comprehensible.) In making this modification on my own system I now find that Edgar5's suggestion of using a right-click context menu works very, very well for me. Thanks, very much Edgar5 for the suggestion.

However, while testing out this right-click context menu way of launching Explorer++ I came across a situation in which it didn't work as expected. Basically, if the folder name contained characters that weren't alpha-numeric characters the right-click context menu didn't pass correct data to Explorer++ and Explorer++ failed to open at the folder's location. You can test this yourself by creating the following three folders with the following names:

Folder With a comma,
Folder With a Hyphen -
Folder With an Apostrophe's


And via the right-click context menu method have them open in Explorer++. The result is Explorer++ opens, but not at those folder locations. After ten minutes of tinkering with this is worked out the solution.

In the link I posted above the instructions there said that "command" entry to use would be something like (adjust the path to suit your own system):

Code: Select all

D:\\PORTABLES\\Explorer++\\Explorer++.exe %1
But if you do that you run into the problem mentioned above if the folder name contains 'unusual characters'. To fix this you need that registry entry to be like this:

Code: Select all

D:\\PORTABLES\\Explorer++\\Explorer++.exe "%1"
Hope all this helps someone, sometime.
BuddhaNature
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2018 10:00 am

Re: Unable to set as default file manager

Post by BuddhaNature »

Addendum to my last post. Well I thought I had it sussed concerning column order and column width settings -- went to bed feeling happy with myself.

This morning I get up and open Explorer++. It has remembered the columns order but has changed the width settings for the columns. I look in the config.xml file and lo and behold Explorer++ has changed all the column widths back to the defaults of "150" and it has done so in both the <Columns> and <DefaultColums> settings in the xml file, this is clearly a bug, it has no business altering the settings in the xml if the user hasn't changed anything regarding column orders and widths. Thing is there seems no rhyme or reason to it doing this. Sometimes it sets things back to the defaults other times it doesn't and I can't see the pattern to this at all.
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