18 replies to this topic

[sonsie]

&*%@* grrr

hating MS and the 'Help Manual' (HA!) writers and the developers and just for good measure...computers, too

"Hey! Let's take the simplest 30 seconds tasks and make them take at least an hour to solve and make people look reeeeally stupid by putting instructions in code so they have to write in and ask a forum!"

Does anyone know how to get rid of the freakin' pane that's suddenly residing on the left side of my desktop? and yeah...it's been at least an hour of searching for answers.

sonsie

[Andavari]

Please post a screenshot of what you're talking about as I haven't a clue.

[sonsie]

Hi Andavari,

Weathering those tornados ok?

Quote

Please post a screenshot of what you're talking about as I haven't a clue.

I might have known you'd assign a task that I don't know how to do. LOL

I know that to make a screenshot I press 'ALT' and 'Print Screen', but....this is embarrassing....where the heck do I find the picture then?? When I used to play an online game I did it all the time, but the pics were always in the game's folder.

The pane is a column on the left, about 2 1/2 inches wide, goes from top to bottom of the screen, and in it are expandable boxes - one says 'Folder Tasks', one says 'Other Places', and the last says 'details' and that one, when I expand it, lists whatever I have open...IE, My Documents, etc. I've seen the pane in folders, and can go to 'tools' and make it appear and disappear, but the one on desktop won't leave.

I still wanna post a screenshot so I know how.

sonsie

[lokoike]

How to post a screenshot.

And viola!


@ Andavari: just realized you live right to my northwest. Small world!

[sonsie]

 screenshot.jpg   222.89K   158 downloadsyayyy! Thank you, lokoike! I knew it was simple. I think what threw me off is I've never pasted unless I copied or cut first, although, I spose, in a way, I did copy - the screen!

ok, there's that pane. I don't think I've ever had it before - hate it.

sonsie

[Andavari]

That would have me kicking my screen in a flash!
I hate that pane in Windows Explorer however I have no ideal why it would appear on your desktop. Hopefully someone has a fix before you bodyslam your computer.

[sonsie]

Quote

That would have me kicking my screen in a flash!
I hate that pane in Windows Explorer however I have no ideal why it would appear on your desktop. Hopefully someone has a fix before you bodyslam your computer.

LMAO! whew, so it's not just me. I've been keeping a window of some sort open at all times just so I don't have to look at it. I don't know why but it's irritating as hell!

As to why it appeared, I ran my Fix-It Utilities registry fixer, cleaner, and defragger, and when I rebooted, it was there. I'm 99.975% positive I didn't delete anything significant - just stuff that used to lead to old jpg's, things like that that I know I created. Fix-It assigns color codes to all of the results it comes up with: red is don't mess with this one unless you have experience with registry; yellow is beware, this might be significant; and white is go ahead and delete this. I save the logs of everything I delete too. Sounds like I may have deleted something to do with my profile/preferences. pickypickypicky

Hopefully someone will know how to get rid of it and will reply - if not, I'll have to add back some items to the registry.

sonsie

[krit86lr]

I had the same the same thing happen to me once. It is very annoying. Unfortunately, the solution that I used is not a happy solution, and therefore I am not going to suggest it. (because it sucks!).

If I were you I would try merging your registry items and see if that was the problem first. That's an easy thing to try. Hopefully there is an easier fix than what I did. I'll tell you as a last resort.


EDIT: Try Humpty's idea!

[Humpty]

Looks like the common tasks pane.See the link below.May help.

Remove Common Tasks

[sonsie]

Hi Humpty!

I couldn't get the utility to work (LOL) but I figure if I'd pursued it with your help it would have. All I got was a little popup window with a header reading "Remove common tasks from desktop". There's a place to type info and above that it says "The value below is incorrect, repairs are needed." and below it are two buttons - "repair" and "exit". There's also "File" and "Help", one leads to exit and the other is 'about'.

I ended up restoring all of the registry items I'd deleted, so now I once again have a bunch of crap in my registry, but the pane/pain is gone.

Thank you, though - I'd bet someone else will use it someday.

Ok krit - I gotta know your sucky solution. Look up each and every registry key to see which one was the one you needed? Wipe Windows and reload?

sonsie

[krit86lr]

sonsie, on Apr 14 2006, 09:24 PM, said:

Ok krit - I gotta know your sucky solution. Look up each and every registry key to see which one was the one you needed? Wipe Windows and reload?

sonsie

It's tooo embarrassing. My lips are sealed. I was only willing to embarrass myself if it was absolutely necessary. And now that your computer is fixed I am saved!


BTW: What program did you use to clean the registry?
K

[DjLizard]

your

[krit86lr]

DjLizard, on Apr 15 2006, 08:19 PM, said:

your

SMARTass.exe is in the house!

[Andavari]

Another overlooked solution for registry related problems of a particular user profile versus a format is to create another new user profile and copy all important documents over to it. Well that will only work if the registry problem is in HKCU, if it's in HKLM then no luck.

[krit86lr]

Andavari, on Apr 15 2006, 09:16 PM, said:

Another overlooked solution for registry related problems of a particular user profile versus a format is to create another new user profile and copy all important documents over to it. Well that will only work if the registry problem is in HKCU, if it's in HKLM then no luck.

Good suggestion, but who is formatting/formatted? I think that I missed something.

[DjLizard]

Er,

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{00021400-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\shellex\ExtShellFolderViews\{5984FFE0-28D4-11CF-AE66-08002B2E1262}]
"PersistMoniker"=hex(2):66,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,3a,00,2f,00,2f,00,25,00,75,00,\
73,00,65,00,72,00,61,00,70,00,70,00,64,00,61,00,74,00,61,00,25,00,5c,00,4d,\
00,69,00,63,00,72,00,6f,00,73,00,6f,00,66,00,74,00,5c,00,49,00,6e,00,74,00,\
65,00,72,00,6e,00,65,00,74,00,20,00,45,00,78,00,70,00,6c,00,6f,00,72,00,65,\
00,72,00,5c,00,44,00,65,00,73,00,6b,00,74,00,6f,00,70,00,2e,00,68,00,74,00,\
74,00,00,00

Save that ^ text as a .reg file, double click to import.

[sonsie]

Quote

What program did you use to clean the registry?

I used Fix-It Utilities 3.0, which used to be by Ontrack, but according to a recent google search, V-COM now owns Fix-It, and the only version I see is Professional 6, which is $50. When I moved in with someone, he put some stuff on my computer that he thought I needed and that was one of the programs, so I don't know how much mine cost a few yrs ago. I love it tho. Never have probs with it and it has a disk fixer, cleaner, verifier, defrag, snapshot, system saver, and undeleter, as well as 5 registry functions, including a defrag, 4 system diagnostics functions, 6 system protection functions like 'crashproof' which stops frequent crashes, and lifeline which allows you to access files if NT won't start, and 4 crisis center functions. I don't use half of those, mostly the disk and diagnostics functions.

I'm not very up on what's available and don't bother looking since I have one I like. I just checked my PCNovice magazine (great magazine for the computerly challenged!) and they recommend CCleaner (cool!), Registry Mechanic, and Registry Medic.

I messed up my computer once when futzing with the registry and left it alone for a long time. The other day was the first time I did anything other than what CCleaner does, and although it was only minor annoyances (like the pane) it was still messed up. I'm beginning to think there's really no way to clean or fix it unless one has experience and knows what they're doing with confidence. I'm one of those who likes their computer really neat and tidy and it bugs me that there's a whole section with junk in it that I can't risk touching.

Quote

It's tooo embarrassing. My lips are sealed. I was only willing to embarrass myself if it was absolutely necessary. And now that your computer is fixed I am saved!

LOL Tease!

sonsie

[krit86lr]

sonsie, on Apr 16 2006, 05:17 AM, said:

I'm one of those who likes their computer really neat and tidy and it bugs me that there's a whole section with junk in it that I can't risk touching.

LOL Tease!

sonsie

PM me and I'll tell you how to safely, and with confidence clean it up more withought messing up your computer.

And I'm not a tease! I'm just not willing to make a fool out of myself without good reason.

Krit

[DjLizard]

Well, up there ^^^, I posted the official fix for this appearing on your desktop.