Remove Extra Folders from Windows 10 Explorer “This PC”

Some new features in WIN10 are annoying so much. For some old-school people which like minimalism, those new features are absolutely useless. I am talking about these special folders shown in the start window of Explorer: "3D Objects", "Desktop", "Documents", "Downloads", "Music", "Picture", "Videos".

I spent some time looking for the simple and reliable solution hiding these folders and keep the start window of Exlorer simple as much as possible. And I found it. There is the article [Tip] Remove Extra Folders from Windows 10 Explorer “This PC” by Vishal Gupta.

In his work he describes in details the problem and provides the solution. In addition the step how to hide these folders he also provides the steps how to revert back them. And finally he supplies with the archive file with .REG files.

In my short work I post with all my modesty and bravety the source codes for both actions.

Hide folders

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;Created by Vishal Gupta for AskVG.com

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{0ddd015d-b06c-45d5-8c4c-f59713854639}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{35286a68-3c57-41a1-bbb1-0eae73d76c95}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{7d83ee9b-2244-4e70-b1f5-5393042af1e4}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{a0c69a99-21c8-4671-8703-7934162fcf1d}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{f42ee2d3-909f-4907-8871-4c22fc0bf756}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\{0DB7E03F-FC29-4DC6-9020-FF41B59E513A}]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{0ddd015d-b06c-45d5-8c4c-f59713854639}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{35286a68-3c57-41a1-bbb1-0eae73d76c95}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{7d83ee9b-2244-4e70-b1f5-5393042af1e4}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{a0c69a99-21c8-4671-8703-7934162fcf1d}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{f42ee2d3-909f-4907-8871-4c22fc0bf756}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Hide"

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\{0DB7E03F-FC29-4DC6-9020-FF41B59E513A}]

Show folders again

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;Created by Vishal Gupta for AskVG.com

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{0ddd015d-b06c-45d5-8c4c-f59713854639}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{35286a68-3c57-41a1-bbb1-0eae73d76c95}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{7d83ee9b-2244-4e70-b1f5-5393042af1e4}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{a0c69a99-21c8-4671-8703-7934162fcf1d}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{f42ee2d3-909f-4907-8871-4c22fc0bf756}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\{0DB7E03F-FC29-4DC6-9020-FF41B59E513A}]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{0ddd015d-b06c-45d5-8c4c-f59713854639}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{35286a68-3c57-41a1-bbb1-0eae73d76c95}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{7d83ee9b-2244-4e70-b1f5-5393042af1e4}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{a0c69a99-21c8-4671-8703-7934162fcf1d}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{f42ee2d3-909f-4907-8871-4c22fc0bf756}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641}\PropertyBag]
"ThisPCPolicy"="Show"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\{0DB7E03F-FC29-4DC6-9020-FF41B59E513A}]

All the credits go to Vishal Gupta

How to enable different languages per applications in WIN10

If you is annoyed with a single language per the whole system in WIN10 and you'd like to have different languages per application (as it has been in previous Windows versions), possibly you have a way to revert back the previous behavior. It is impossible, if you have Windows 10 Home edition for single language. In this sad situation you have to upgrade to Window 10 Home edition or Windows 10 Professional.

Recipe 1

1. Launch Settings
2. Open Time & Language
3. In the left side click Region & language
4. In the right side scroll down and click Additional date, time & regional settings

After that the new window called Control Panel\Clock, Language and Region will be launched:

5. Be sure that Clock, Language, and Region is selected in the left side
6. In the right side click Change input methods

In the same window you will be forwarded on the screen called Control Panel\Clock, Language and Region\Language:

7. In the left side click Advanced settings

Again you will be forwarded on the screen called Control Panel\Clock, Language and Region\Language\Advanced settings:

8. Scroll down until you find Switching input methods
9. Check in Let me set a different input method for each app window
10. Click the button Save

Recipe 2

There is shorter way with the same results.

1. Open Windows Start Menu
2. Start typing control panel
3. You will be prompted to launched Control Panel. Do it
4. Find and click Clock, Language, and Region

After that continue from the step 5 from the previous recipe.

Stop rotating the screen with CTRL+ALT+Arrows

It could happen that I forget about it and this short note is a chance to remember. [:Smile:]

There are two comprehensive recipes describing how to stop rotating the screen in Windows.

Recipe 1

In the Tray find the icon called Intel(R) HD Graphics

1. Click on it
2. Select Graphics Options
3. Select Hot Keys
4. Select Disable

If for some reasons you don't have this icon in the Tray, follow the next procedure.

Recipe 2

1. Open Settings in the Windows Start Menu
2. Select the icon System or type in the search field "change display settings"
3. In the left side select Display
4. In the right side find and click Display adapter settings

A new dialog (most likely called as Generic PnP Monitor and Intel(R) HD Graphics Family Properties) will be opened:

5. In the dialog click on the tab Intel(R) HD Graphics Control Panel

The following step is useful as you will be able in the future to handle with it accordingly the Recipe 1.

6. Check in Show Tray Icon

Continue tuning:

7. Click the big button Graphics Properties...

New application will be launched (Intel(R) HD Graphics Control Panel):

8. take a note that the home page is opened (or click on the icon designating a house in the circle in upper-left side of the application)
9. Click Options and Support
10. In the left side select Hot Key Manager
11. In the right side find Manage Hot Keys and check in Disabled
12. Click the button Apply in the right-bottom side

That's all! Now the feature is disabled and will not be annoying you when you accidentally tap these keystrokes.

When you need to turn on the feature, follow the Recipe 1 but select Enable.

Cygwin Here

This short article explains how to open a specific folder in Cygwin.

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Continuing long lines in a batch script

Unintentionally I found for myself that a batch script has a nice feature to break long lines without loosing of possibility of reading them.

Imagine, you have some weird combination of commands as below that is not put completely in one line of a screen.

some-command-with-many-arguments | another-lomg-command-with-its-own-arguments | etc | etc | etc

If the line of a code cannot be shown within one line on a screen it will be i) either turned and the rest of line will be shown below on one or more lines or ii) continued out of edges of the screen with a horizontal scrolling bar. Both of them are not convenient because we not able to observe the code entirely.

Fortunately, modern batch scripts (in XP, Vista, Win7) have blocks implemented by brace:

(
    some-command-with-many-arguments 
) | (
    another-long-command-with-its-own-arguments 
) | etc | etc | etc

I known this feature (because I used brace in the if-else and for statements) but did not realised right now.

So, this gives us good possibility to break the long line into a several lines without loosing of functionality. This is better than nothing and is better than undocumented feature using the DOS-like escaping character ^ at the very ending of the line because you have to look after that this character is in the lastest character of the line. See the same example with the esacaping character:

some-command-with-many-arguments | ^
another-long-command-with-its-own-arguments | ^
etc | etc | etc

Unix shell scripts are featured to continue long commands using by backslashes since the begining of the Unix wolrd.

some-command-with-many-arguments \
| another-long-command-with-its-own-arguments \
| etc | etc | etc

How to concatenate multiple lines in console (bash, cmd)

If for some reasons you need to have concatenated lines try one of the recipes below.

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Merge and sort many logfiles having multiline entries

logmerge is the small and powerful script to merge two or more log files so that multiline entries appear in the correct chronological order without breaks of entries. Optional arguments control an adding of descriptive fields at the beginning of each line in the resulting combined logfile. Reading of .gz/.bz2 files is available.

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Universal way to identify your external IP and more

There are many such kind of resources in Internet but this is the best. It allows the numerous structured data and it has nice name. Meet http://ifconfig.me/.

Command line interface

Using curl

curl ifconfig.me

or wget

wget -qO - ifconfig.me/ip

JScript

JS

var xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');
xmlhttp.open('GET', 'http://ifconfig.me/ip', false);
xmlhttp.send();
 
var ip = xmlhttp.responseText;

JS+XML

var xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');
xmlhttp.open('GET', 'http://ifconfig.me/all.xml', false);
xmlhttp.send();
 
var ip = xmlhttp.responseXml.getElementsByTagName('ip_addr')[0].text;

Having JSON library you can read and parse JSON data:

var xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');
xmlhttp.open('GET', 'http://ifconfig.me/all.json', false);
xmlhttp.send();
 
var data = JSON.parse(xmlhttp.responseText);
var ip = data.ip_addr;

VBScript

Dim xmlhttp, ip
 
Set xmlhttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
xmlhttp.open "GET", "http://ifconfig.me/ip", False
xmlhttp.send
 
ip = xmlhttp.responseText

Artist/Album Info in Foobar2000

foobar2000 is perfect mediaplayer for Windows platforms. It is kind of those applications whose functionality is extendable simply adding plugins. One of these finest plugins is Run services that allows to run external applications and scrpts from within foobar2000.

I use Run services to view/edit information about albums or artists stored in plain text files. Let's consider how it is possible.

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Версии Internet Explorer

Нечасто, но иногда на странице требуется программно определить какой же браузер и какой версии используется. Для этого существует несколько способов определения.

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Обмен данными и объектами между скриптами

Однажды на Сером форуме шло обсуждение как можно осуществить обмен данными между скриптами. Идея основана на создании нового экземпляра, наследуемого от интерфейса IWebBrowser2 (ссылка: IWebBrowser2 Interface). Объект хранит в себе данные даже после завершения всех скриптов, практически как буфер обмена, и может служить как средство обмена данными и объектами между скриптами.

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Windows Scripting Command Interpreter

Консольный интерпретатор JS/VBS-скриптов в автоматическом и интерактивном режимах.

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CMD/BAT A few useful routines

Analogues of pwd, basename and dirname.

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CMD/BAT: Repeat a string multiple times

If you want to get a string repeated multiple times -- you can use this routine. I have realised this as an attempt to implement this optimal algorithm using CMD/BAT only. It accepts three arguments: the name of a variable to store the resulting string, the multiplier (number of time the input string should be repeated), and the input string.

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Cross-platform date/time definition

Earlier here (in Russian) i have investigated ways how to obtain date and time parts using the CMD.EXE features. After that here (in Russian too) i have simplified this way until two lines of a code. But both ways are platform-dependent - the order of date parts depends on the locale settings.

Recently i found the excelent link (in Russian too) with the description how to obtain the subject platform-independently.

I slightly modified the established method and present it now.

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CMD/BAT Librarian

Introduction

Unfortunately CMD.EXE, the command line interpreter in Windows, does not allows to collect favorite scripts under appropriate folders and use them multiple times in the future. So we have to use the "copy-and-paste" technology to migrate some needed functionalities from one script to another.

The script below allows to store debugged scripts under the determined folder, use them mutiple times, compile and link automatically to the final script.

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Logfile rotation by CMD/BAT

The script below allows to rotate file (e.g.: logfiles). By default, the length of rotation is 5. It means that this script rotates some file no more than for 5 times.

Let's consider the permanently growing file of some application named as something.log and we'd like to keep records in this file for the long time as much as possible. But for some reason this file is cleaning up periodically or a size of the file affects on the application's performance.

The recent records are available from the file something.log and the previously saved records are available under the name something.log.1, etc until the something.log.5. After the following rotation the content of the last file will be lost and replaced by the content of the previous file (something.log.4 will be copied to the something.log.5) and the first file something.log will be copied to the something.log.1. At the same time the something.log will be truncated.

rotate something.log 10

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WHICH: UNIX-to-NT ported

WHICH is unix-world command, implemented using CMD/BAT feature only.

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Simple Batch Progress Bar

Example 1. Print the bar within the window with '#' as the default filling character

call :progressbar 50

Example 2. The same as above but with an another filling character

call :progressbar 50 *

Example 3. Print the bar in the window title

set progressbar_t=1
call :progressbar 50

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CMD/BAT: GetOptions

This is flexible and useful library to manipulate with arguments in CMD/BAT scripts.

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