Broken Favorites In Windows Explorer

Description:

I once had an issue where I deleted all my folders in my user profile (because I don’t use it) and I could not access my Favorites in Windows Explorer anymore! I thought the fix would be just to drag and drop a newly created “favorites” folder, that didn’t work…

To Resolve:

1. In your User profile (C:\Users\%username%) create a new folder called Links

2. In the same folder create a folder named Favorites

3. Run => regedit

4. Navigate to each of these locations and make sure they point to your Favorites folder:

   • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\Shell folders
   • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\User Shell folders
   • HKEY_USERS\.default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\Shell folders
   • HKEY_USERS\.default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\User Shell folders

5. Restart

6. To Remove Your HomeGroup folder:

   • Run => regedit
   • Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}\ShellFolder (for 64bit) or
   • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}\ShellFolder (for 32bit)
   • Right click on “ShellFolder” => Permissions => Administrators => Allow Full Control
   • On the right, click on “Attributes” => Value: b094010c
   • Restart