Looking at this with fresh eyes, but my God Google AI is so annoying, I do not want to use it but it keeps sticking it's nose into my queries, and the information it spews out is awful. I remember there was a way to add custom buttons to WINFILE.EXE to see if I could trace the problem backwards, in order to see what files are used. And Google AI tells me this, wish I could tell it back that if it is possible, WinZip does it for example, and very sure there was KB years ago that told you how to do it, think there was a sample DLL from Microsoft, XTEN or something along those lines, there is also an [Addon] section in WINFILE.INI

Strange I thought someone may have also come across this issue as well.

Anyway I started from scratch (erase hard drive, etc.) and the problem has disappeared! Now I am using a slipstreamed iso (SP5, Post SP5 patches and other bits) but what I did differently this time was include files from https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27269 (Windows NT 3.51 GUI modifications) as an experiment. Not sure why that would make a difference as thought the problem was something conflicting or being over written (the good old DLL hell thing). But either way the problem has gone, but still interested if anyone else has had similar issues.

Annoyingly this time, every slight configuration change I did, I restarted to find if that was the issue, and now it did not replicate! Even something minor, e.g. renaming Win32app to Program Files

So was playing around again last night and the issue with the toolbar in WINFILE.EXE reared its ugly head again, I ran Dependency Walker to see if the DLL's were okay, and they were all correct, then I decided to see if the issue was replicated on the Administrator account, which is was not, so thinking this was a user/registry setting issue now, so I began to dig through the registry editor and came across

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\File Manager\Settings

Which has the key ToolbarWindow - cannot find any real documentation on this, I compared the binary/hex between the two accounts but could not see any difference, so backed up the information, and well, deleted it. Opened File Manager and the toolbar was repaired! Hex in ToolbarWindow shown below (now of course I am assuming that key is the cause of the issue), but there are other keys:

AddOn, but that points towards a MS Mail DLL or SendFI32? cannot remember, and maybe always been there (but could be a cause maybe?)
The previous displayed windows (e.g. C:) - dir1: REG_SZ
Window: REG_SZ - assessing that is display size of WINFILE itself as is 0,0,1024,768,,,1

So gradually getting there to finding the cause, at lease I can repair the issue now, essentially going to have to install each bit of software 1 by 1 restarting in-between to find which one is causing the issue, which I stopped doing as the issue previously just disappeared!

Fun thread, please continue sharing your findings!

Ringding wrote on 2025-05-07, 14:25:

Fun thread, please continue sharing your findings!

Thanks, thought I was speaking to myself!

Anyway, found a bit of software which causes this issue, as this was related to the File Manager toolbar and buttons, I went though finding applications that add additional buttons to the toolbar. So went out my way to break it! I Installed WinZip (v7) and that before my eyes caused the glitch.

In the corresponding registry settings, it had added WZFM32.DLL to the AddOns key (did not notice anything new in the ToolbarWindow key), WZFM32.DLL in the WinZip documentation is used for File Manager integration, makes sense.

So deleted I the registry key as previously, which repaired the toolbar, oddly the WinZip buttons are still there, including the menu drop down and still work, WinZip when opened also did not restore the deleted information to the registry, so it keeps working despite the AddOns and ToolbarWindow keys missing in the registry.

So uninstalled WinZip and thought I would try WinZip 6.3 and it also caused the issue, again deleting the registry entry solved the problem and WinZip integration in File Manager keeps working.

Another finding is the button issue in WinZip in my 1st entry (the icons do not appear on the buttons) on this thread appears to be unrelated it appears the WinZip 7 buttons (in the application itself) on NT 3.51 do not display in high colour, just 256 colour. But work perfectly in WinZip 6.3

So not sure how I solved the issue in the Windows 3.1 days, maybe I deleted parts of/tweaked WINFILE.INI?