[SOLVED] How do I keep folder from showing in 'groups' ?

[THRobinson]

I have an SSD primary drive for installing software onto, and a 2TB HDD for files, both internal.

I wiped out my C:\ (SSD) and reinstalled Win10x64, for no reason... I just do it yearly to clean things up. When I do I leave the 2TB drive alone... no formatting or anything. When done, I remap downloads, music, videos, documents etc to the HDD drive.

Some reason, before updates it was fine... after running all the Win10 updates the Downloads folder (and so far only this folder) keeps defaulting to sort by Date, and Group by Date Modified.

I click a blank spot, switch it back to list view sorted A-Z and it changes back when I go back to the folder. I'll reset it and go to Folder Options and Apply to Folders as the default... and resets itself next time I go to the folder.

Weird small glitch, very annoying, really don't want to reformat it again for something small like that.

Any ideas?

 

[Colif]

Did you grab a new installer when you reinstalled win 10?

guess you are talking about the Downloads folder, most other folders are sorted by name. The default sort order for the Downloads folder has been changed in 1903 and above to group files by date.

To change that back, open File Explorer and go to your Downloads folder. Click on the 'View' tab at the top and in the 'Group by' drop down menu select '(None)'.

https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/145833-disable-new-folder-settings-organize-date.html

every 6 months you get a new version of win 10 anyway so your clean install is just an extra clean up.

 

[THRobinson]

Same installer as before.

"To change that back, open File Explorer and go to your Downloads folder. Click on the 'View' tab at the top and in the 'Group by' drop down menu select '(None)'."

Quite literally what I did... after doing it various ways in various different ordered, and doing it multiple times toggling it back and forth, it seems to now be sticking. Not sure what finally worked or why.

Next issue is I walked away for a few hours, came back and the PC was in sleep mode. Every single power saver setting for sleep, screen off, hibernate etc... plugged in or battery... it set to never. Yet... somehow, it put itself to sleep. Annoyed because I had Handbrake running re-encoding about a dozen files... hard to tell if they were still encoding or if paused.

Went through and rechecked, rebooted... will see if happens again.

Might just take this as a warning sign that something went wrong. I've installed Win10 onto this about a dozen times... first time having these weird minor issues.

 

[THRobinson]

Had "Windows 10 1607 Oct 2016"... grabbed "Version 20H2 Build 19042.630" and trying again.

Soon as I posted I went to do something and the NumLock is off and won't go back on. Something's wonky... pain in the butt but, just as fast/easy to start over.

 

[Colif]

make sure to update that installer before you clean install next year, save PC having to grab them all again.

 

[THRobinson]

Well... tried again and had issues with a few items plus a few 'unknown devices' that I simply could not find drivers for.

Ended up formatting again, and using the old Win10 I had from 3yrs ago. Pain in the butt, but, it worked fine this time and it had whatever driver the new one was missing. 38GB of updates later the system runs fine (minus a minor Skype issue that sometimes occurs).

Tried every driver on the ASUS site for my board, and the Intel site... started another thread as well for the driver and didn't get anywhere. Not sure what it is or why the new Win10 is missing it but, it works.

 

[Colif]

38GB of updates later

how did it get that much? win 10 isn't that big, did it install all the version updates along the way? I guess that is price you pay using an old installer.
How big is your windows.old folder? it will disappear in 10 days if its silly big.

wonder what the unknown devices were. Newer versions of win 10 should have everything the previous had. It should get easier to install on them as time goes on, not harder.

My last PC had a Z97 motherboard from Asus, there isn't a massive difference between the 2 besides overclocking support, so I wouldn't think there would be unknown devices on there. I never ran into problems updating it to 20H1, I haven't tried 20H2 as i haven't turned it on since I got this PC 3 months ago.

it works now but its curious.

 

[THRobinson]

Windows folder is about 20.5gb, so yeah... 3yrs of updates updating updated updates is around 38gb... then a few days later I had another batch!

Used disk cleanup and wiped all that stuff out. Oddly it makes the windows old folder for downgrading back to the previous version, which is really weird since I installed onto a formatted unpartitioned drive.

Never figured out what the drivers were that it needed... never got anywhere with my other thread figuring it out. Not sure why the newer version would miss things but, device manager is looking good. Also no more random sleep/hibernate issues.

Well, it works is the main thing. Paint in the butt, but going forward I'll probably just use the old Win10 again until Win11 comes out.

 

[Colif]

Version updates always create a windows.old folder as it allows you to roll back to previous version of Win 10, not just older windows.

I mentioned in your other post a way to reduce the need to update all those times after an install if you still use 1607.