Windows 7

Windows 7 doesn’t include an option wherein you can disable auto arrange in folders (icons view). Sometime back I created a magical registry hack (FFlags DWORD 43000001) that disabled the "Full Row Select" functionality in folders in Windows 7. I also posted some interesting observations in article How to Disable Full Row Select in Explorer in Windows 7 about the registry hack, which demonstrates that applying the hack also brings back the missing "Auto arrange" menu option in the View menu of folders when in Icons view.

Automate Using Script

Update: I just converted the registry edits to a Script file that does all the work. Works in Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and Windows 10.

Check out my recent post How to Disable Full Row Select and Auto Arrange in Folders in Windows 10?

To do this Manually

I hereby bring you a slightly tweaked version (sets FFlags to 43000000) of the same registry hack and provide some screenshots in this article. After applying this edit you can enable or disable auto arrange feature on a per-folder basis. Of course, an "Undo" REG file is provided in case you want to revert back to the factory default setting.Read more

If you have a host application that you don’t want to be pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar, you can do so by adding a registry value in the application registration area. By default Windows prevents the following host processes from being pinned to the taskbar.

1. RUNDLL32.EXE
2. MSHTA.EXE
3. DLLHOST.EXE
4. APPLAUNCH.EXE
5. HH.EXE
6. WINHLP32.EXE
7. MMC.EXE

… and other file names defined in the following registry key in string values HostApps, AddRemoveApps and AddRemoveNames

To remove the Pin to Taskbar (and "Pin this program to taskbar") context menu options for a particular application, use these steps:Read more

I’m writing this article specifically for Windows 7, because the FullRowSelect registry value that you used in Windows Vista, doesn’t work in Windows 7. (REF: Enable or Disable Full Row Select feature in Explorer in Windows Vista). After some of our readers reported that setting FullRowSelect to 0 doesn’t do anything in Windows 7, I decided to have a look at this issue. Playing with different bitmask values, I finally got what I wanted – to disable full row select feature in Windows Explorer (Details mode) in Windows 7, but with a minor side-effect which is explained in the later part of the article.Read more

As we recently saw the Aero Shake feature can be disabled by enabling the “Turn off Aero Shake window minimizing mouse gesture” option in the Group Policy Editor, or by creating the NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts registry value. Here’s another way to disable Aero Shake using the registry.Read more