Add specific folders to Navigation Pane

KeithM said:

Hi. You're welcome. Happy to help, but need more info for troubleshooting. Appreciate the screenshot, but it doesn't reveal much but the folder names. I'm gussing it's a snip of the folders as they appear on the Desktop or in Explorer when viewing the Desktop

Quetions:

1. Are the folders appearinfg in the Navigation Pane as well?
2. Did you generate unique CLSIDs for each folder?
3. Did you create them under HKCU or HKLM?
4. Afre they inserted into the Desktop Namespace under HKCU or HKLM?

Please include in your reply:

• Answers to above questions
• Screenshot of context menu when right-clciking one of the folders
• Registry exports of both newly-created GUID-named entries under HKCR:\CLSID

This screenshot is of the folders appearing in the explorer.

1. Yes, they do appear in the Navigation pane as well. Here's a screenshot:

2. No, i didn't generate any CLSIDs for the folders, i did only for "WSL" (path: \\wsl$) shown in above screenshot with the help of
WinAero Tweaker. They appear in the navigation pane as sub items when those distros are active and running.
3. They were created under HKEY_CURRENT_USER and also under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT & HKEY_USERS
4. HKCU

* Right-clicking on them does nothing when doing inside the "WSL" special folder, but when i open \\wsl$ (which opens under Network) regular context menu shows up. So my suspicion is something's wrong with folder permissions

KeithM said:

OK, so `WSL` is the special folder/Naviagtion Pane creatioin, and the folders mentioned earlier are just the contents of that folder, right???

So:

• Post a .reg export of the HKCR\CLSID\<CLSID of WSL instance> key.
• Are there any other items in the folder? Do they function normally? Can you place a simple text file in \\wsl$ and see if that can be opened?

Yes, WSL is the special folder and rest are it's contents.

There will be no other items apart from the network share folders that appear. These network share folders are of the respective WSL distros and appear only when the distros are active and running.

I cannot double-click on them to open but i can access them by clicking their folders in the navigation pane. No other file cannot be copied and pasted here in \\wsl$ (it doesn't function as a normal folder, it is actually a network location).

Here's the reg export:
export.reg

@KeithM

I figured out, it was the "InProcServer32" key that i'd to change accordingly.

KeithM said:

Accordingly to what?!?!?!?

Shell32.dll???

I had been testing some things, but very limited in network paths. the dll specified in your export works identically for simple local file system paths.

But the fact that Shell32.dll is the InProcServer for the Folder Shortcut classmade me wonder....

Earlier it was set to "shdocvw.dll" by Winaero tweaker and i changed it to "%systemroot%\system32\NetworkExplorer.dll" taking the example from "Network" system folder

KeithM said:

Cool. I was unaware of that option. Thanks for sharing your findings!

EDIT
In addition to "InProcServer32", "Attributes" DWORD should also be changed. Earlier it was set to "f080004d", then changing it to "b0040064" enabled right-clicking as well as double-clicking to open the folders

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@KeithM

I'm still unable to keep the sub-items pinned

I've tried taking the example of the users libraries folder:

Code:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{A302545D-DEFF-464b-ABE8-61C8648D939B}

I created an entry for WSL (\\wsl$) and then created an entry for it's sub-item and specified the GUID value of WSL as the value for "ParentFolder" string.. but still unable to make it work

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Also is it possible to redirect a UNC path to a shell location ? for eg: If i type in \\wsl$ it should open the newly created shell location

I previously thought that creating a shell location for any path will automatically redirect to or resolve it as the new shell location but instead it is exactly opposite of what i thought

One way to keep the sub-items pinned to this location would be to add them as network locations
But, how do i get "Add Network Location" to show up in the context menu, i've tried mimicking This PC's properties but it doesn't work