Classic Shell: Forum

This is as an fyi, because it has been solved.

I use Classic Shell/Classic Explorer on Windows 7, and around December 10th I noticed that the annoying Navigation Pane jumping behavior was back, despite my still having "Fix Folder Scrolling" ticked.

I kind of suspected Windows Update (there was a boatload of them in December), but (a) I couldn't find anyone else reporting a similar problem, and (b) for me, WU doesn't usually turn out to be the reason for the problem du jour.

So I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Classic Shell and that didn't help. I also did try uninstalling two Windows Updates relating to IE 10, since IE is of course integrated with Windows Explorer. Neither these, nor many other things I tried, helped.

Then I decided to do a System Restore to a date (barely) preceding all of the December Updates. I acted just in time, becuase I only had one pre-updates restore point left (December 6).

That immediately fixed the navigation pane jumping behavior (as long as the "Fix" remained ticked in Classic Explorer).

I then reinstalled the Windows Updates, 1-3 at a time, rebooting and testing after each reinstall to ensure the jumping hadn't returned. When I was done, everything was still fine.

Now that raises the question: If the Windows Updates were the culprit, why didn't the problem recur after I reinstalled them? The reason may be that, as documented elsewhere, at least one of the original updates was causing various kinds of problems for some users (Win 7 only), so MS had pushed out some replacement update(s). But apparently their "fixes" didn't fix what one or more of the updates had broken for *me*. But completely rolling back to a pre-Updates date by System Restore first and *then* running Windows Update as described, to install the latest iteration of the December updates, did the trick. So much for MS "Automatic Patching." I'm going to carefully check the Navigation Pane scrolling behavior after *every* Windows Update from now on.

Just thought I'd mention this in case it might help anyone else.

Had to create an account just to post a reply. Because you rolled back system restore to an earlier date and cannot even say for sure which windows update broke this major annoyance fix that classic shell has always rectified, it cannot possibly be called "solved".

This should be an open bug/issue being tracked. I have multiple WIN7x64 machines with Classicshell 2.04 and 2.10 that now are both also broken scrolling/jumping when double-clicking an explorer folder in the left pane. This most likely is a recent break in October-December so I agree with OP there but I cannot roll every machine I own back months and am having difficulty because I cleaned up my windows updates in determining if in fact, it is a particular recent windows update or something else that has rendered this classic-shell age old fix obsolete and no longer functioning.

Can anyone else help narrow down which windows updates (or any other app install) is suddenly causing this?

My Windows 7 system is up to date and the scrolling fix is working. Let's confirm that we are talking about the same thing.
The only problem Classic Explorer is fixing is this:
You open a new Explorer window
You scroll down from the top
You select a folder without expanding it
You expand the folder (click on the triangle with the mouse, double-click or press the right arrow key)
The folder moves down - this is the wrong behavior

The problem occurs only if a folder is expanded for the first time and only if it is already selected.

The correct behavior is for the folder to not move, or to move up if its sub-folders don't fit.

Correct and it's funny because the "fix behavior" is different with beta 4.20. Prior to Dec, either 1. Double-clicking a folder in left pane, or 2. Single-clicking to highlight a folder in left pane and then expanding using the + was fixed by classic shell in that no "jumping" to the bottom occurred (I can test this in a VM as well).

Now, something with a MS update changed it. Also, in 4.20 CS beta, now my "initial" expand does not jump, but if I then continue to expand (or double-click) folders in left pane, the "jump" scrolling begins. So, it's "partially" fixed somehow in 4.20 codebase because in 4.10, not even the initial expansion "jumping" was suppressed anymore after December windows updates.

I have 2 machines in front of me which exhibit this broken behavior, so I'm guessing I'm not the only one and others simply haven't noticed or began screaming about it (or, like me, took a while to even remember this problem and that I relied on classicshell to fix it starting YEARS ago).

EDIT: I just determined there is a key to reproducing! It's not only the "initial" that is okay, EVERY expansion (or double-click) in left pane is fine UNLESS you scroll the left pane. So, open explorer, expand a left pane folder (test is ok), expand another (tests ok). Scroll left pane using mouse wheel. EVERY expansion in left pane from that point forward is broken until explorer is closed and re-opened!

I actually snapped a quick 20 second youtube video demonstrating as a picture worth 1000 words. 1st open of explorer, note no movement in left pane folders upon expansion. I close explorer, reopen and (move the mouse to try to draw attention to) simply use mousewheel to scroll the left folder pane at all. I then perform the exact same folder expansion, and you clearly see it jump to the bottom (the broken windows behavior we all rely on ClassicShell to fix).

Hope this helps clarify let me know if there is anything else I can test but again this is reproduce-able on multiple machines. Thanks!

http://youtu.be/hOgDAXH5558

I am unable to reproduce the problem.
Two questions about your video:
1) How are you opening Explorer? I noticed that it has the I drive automatically selected. Do you have a shortcut to it?
2) How are you scrolling with the wheel? When I open Explorer it focuses on the right pane and that's what scrolls initially. How do you transfer the focus to the left pane?

Your question just gave me an ephiphany. I (like many others) run clover3 to add tabs to explorer. Even though there hasn't been an update to it in a little over a full year, MS must have changed something with the way (I'm guessing here but since it's a BHO) IE/security loads that the clover BHO somehow suddenly loading before almost at a higher priority than the ClassicShell BHO. That's an educated guess because I've gone back and forth and if I load IE11 and disable the one Clover BHO of:

Name: ExplorerWatcher Class
Publisher: (Not verified) EJIE Technology
Type: Browser Helper Object
Architecture: 64-bit
Version: 3.0.406.0
File date: ‎Thursday, ‎January ‎23, ‎2014, ‏‎5:09 AM
Date last accessed: ‎Today, ‎January ‎25, ‎2015, ‏‎7 minutes ago
Class ID: {F8A6CAA2-533D-4AED-9E05-8EB19A4021AB}
Use count: 37
Block count: 0
File: TabHelper64.dll
Folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Clover

And re-run the exact same tests, the behavior is as it should be without any jump/scrolling. So, not sure why ClassicShell apparently overrode (or Trumped) the Clover3 BHO before but as of approx December no longer does, but do you see any way to "play nice" with Clover (or other tab manager explorer addons)?

Clover3 is freeware feel free to grab it and test and I think you'll be able to quickly reproduce.

Also, to answer your question I do launch explorer with the following shortcut (from old days) because I like to load C: drive directly: explorer /e,c:\
I also have "expand to current folder" selected in explorer and "show all folders" deselected although it does not appear these have any impact on this behavior but if you want to reproduce.

Any theories as to what MS changed, or whether it would be possible to get that awesome bugfix in ClassicShell to work with Clover3 and latest Windows updates?

Thanks again for the help! Awesome product and I'm willing to help more if needed!

Oh and I forgot to add I retested and ANY scrolling in the left pane with Clover3 active, even manually clicking the vertical scrollbar and not even using the mouse wheel will reproduce the behavior, so the mouse wheel itself it definitely not the issue. If you get enough folders on screen in left pane you can literally click expand every single one without the jumping occurring until left pane scrolled at all. It's weird that it's only once any scrolling in the left pane occurs that the ClassicShell BHO "fix" basically deactivates is the only way to describe it.