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back to article Modern life is rubbish – so why not take a trip down memory lane with Windows File Manager?

First released as part of Windows 3.0 in 1990 before shuffling into the digital deadzone following the end of support for Windows NT 4.0, the venerable File Manager application has made a surprising comeback on Windows 10 following a release of the source code on GitHub. A tool beloved by those too timid to go near the command …

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  1. Unicornpiss
    Thumb Up

    Cool beans..

    The best part has to be it not nagging you to use the cloud for storing everything.

    For those that want a nice file manager for Windows with some extra features, Explorer++ is pretty decent, and also portable. It can be a bit crashy when you ask it for things like displaying the size of huge network folders though.

    35 1 Reply
    1. MyffyW Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Love the headline...

      Only interested if it has a picture of Mallard on the help screen

      7 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Love the headline...

        It's a relic of a simpler time and, at just over 700kB when compiled with modern tools, a leaner time too.

        Parklife!

        9 0 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Love the headline...

          >Parklife!

          Wrong album :-)

          Food processors are great.

          5 0 Reply
        2. Hans 1
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          Happy

          Re: Love the headline...

          "Sunday, Sunday here again, tidy attire"

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjH2_fbjRCc

          Worth it ... ;-)

          2 1 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cool beans..

      If I'm using cloud storage, I'm definitely not using Microsoft's cloud.

      Perish the thought, SatNad.

      The best file manager I've used to date is Ghisler's Total Commander. What it lacks in eye candy, it more than makes up with common sense and functionality.

      Bonus: no Onedrive nags.

      14 2 Reply
      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Cool beans..

        Ghisler's Total Commander

        Which is itself a clone of the venerable Norton Commander. On my linux/FreeBSD boxes I *always* install Midnight Commander (likewise a clone) for the same reasons - doing stuff to files and directories[1] in a nice easy fashion.

        [1] I can't bring myself to call it a 'folder'

        5 1 Reply
      2. jackalek
        Reply Icon

        Re: Cool beans..

        I can concur, I could not work with anything else, and I do a lot of file management.

        Proud owner of a licence for this masterpiece of software. To be honest, this is the only thing which stops me from using Linux on my work machine, the file manager. I do poke Linux via Putty (kitty actually) on daily basis, but the Linux desktop is a no-go area due to lack decent file manager.

        1 1 Reply
    3. J. R. Hartley
      Reply Icon

      Re: Cool beans..

      God I miss the Amiga :'(

      10 2 Reply
      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Unhappy

        Re: Cool beans..

        I miss 3D Skeuomorphic [in windows anyway]

        The article's example photo had those DIETY CONDEMNED 2D FLATSO DECORATIONS like "Ape" and Win-10-nic.

        I remember when Windows XP was accused of being 'bulbous'. Well, so the hell WHAT. It's a lot BETTER than FLATSO.

        Win 3.x with its File Manager and Program Manager sold BECAUSE OF THE 3D SKEUOMORPHIC APPEARANCE, which was CLEARLY SUPERIOR to the Windows 2.x "flatso" look.

        At least Win 2.x had more COLOR in their 'Flatso' than APE or Win-10-nic.

        2 8 Reply
  2. m0rt

    Pfawwwww..

    Xtree Gold ftw.

    50 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Xtree Gold ftw.

      I find Eaglemode quite fun ... although I never use it for anything, and it's a bit recent for this thread probably.

      0 0 Reply
      1. lorisarvendu
        Reply Icon

        Re: Xtree Gold ftw.

        I'm a major Xtree fan, which is why I have been using Ztree for probably going on 10 years now.

        http://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm

        5 0 Reply
  3. israel_hands

    Xtree Gold was the mutt's nuts! I used to use it for cracking games on floppies back in the day, then sending them back in jiffy backs to some dodgy Swedish block who ran a BBS.

    I was particularly impressed when I started opening Star Controll II source files in it using hex-view and could see all the ship designs in ascii.

    Good times.

    18 1 Reply
    1. David Hall 1
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      Thank you for the memories. Totally forgot about Xtree but you are bang on right !

      9 0 Reply
    2. MyffyW Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Got to love anything with a hex-editor.

      Total tangent, but messing with the hex code in Frontier.exe could make some of the core worlds much more interesting. Want a space station round Venus? Five minutes editing and there we go.

      14 0 Reply
      1. MrDamage Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Loved XTG.

        So many of my mates x86 computers stopped saying "Bad command or filename" , and started saying "Learn to spell, dickhead"

        Normally just after I remmed out everything in autoexec and config.sys, and used XTG to give everything else +RSH attributes.

        6 0 Reply
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    Ahhh my favorite was two panes with save off so it always opened the same way, we have all gone our ways sonce then, But I always loved 'list.com' by Vernon Buerg a directory lister and file viewer - Just the best, and quietly so.

    Like so many others RIP Vernon Buerg

    P.S Few people knew, that you could add addins/extensions to fileman.exe it usually had the mail extension, but others could be written to also work and you could use right click on files, and if clever even use shell32.dll and get Explorer right click functionality.

    13 0 Reply
    1. localgeek
      Reply Icon

      I remember list.com fondly. A simple, but useful way to browse through directories and quickly view the contents of text files.

      8 0 Reply
  5. g00se
    FAIL

    life extension - file extension

    File extensions visible in that screenshot. I'm wondering if they used to hide them by default in those days ...

    5 8 Reply
    1. LenG
      Reply Icon

      Re: life extension - file extension

      Nope - it took them a long time to rise to that level of stupidity.

      93 0 Reply
      1. m0rt
        Reply Icon

        Re: life extension - file extension

        The trick is not to show anyone anything that might upset them.

        Hence the ubiquitous search on modern OSes that helpfully fail to show you the location of the files it finds unless you click on the bugger first.

        Unless that is just MacOS.

        Ever get the feeling we are moving backward?

        19 0 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: life extension - file extension

          "The trick is not to show anyone anything that might upset them.

          Hence the ubiquitous search on modern OSes that helpfully fail to show you the location of the files it finds unless you click on the bugger first.

          Unless that is just MacOS."

          No windows 10 search is the same, although you cam tweak it to provide more info, it doesn't by default show the location

          7 0 Reply
          1. Unicornpiss
            Reply Icon

            Re: life extension - file extension

            One of my peeves with Windows is in the search--and other places, you can select "details" for your view as many times as you want, but it will never save your prefs. Apparently Microsoft knows what's best for you when it comes to how you want to view your files. And apparently we all must suffer big, blocky icons as the default view for so many things.

            10 0 Reply
            1. DropBear
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              Trollface

              Re: life extension - file extension

              Ah, you're right - I forgot search isn't spelled "Agent Ransack" by default in windows...

              2 0 Reply
        2. JLV
          Reply Icon

          Re: life extension - file extension

          You may find this of interest:

          https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/317992/is-there-any-way-to-get-the-path-of-a-folder-in-macos/

          Not defending Finder in the least, but still a useful shortcut. I use Forklift.

          One thing I suspect Apple likes to do is to have you rely as much as possible on its system, rather than giving you context. Besides doing this to filenames, they also helpfully make it very difficult to show an actual phone #, rather than a contact name, in iOS. Fear of getting lost - another way to keep you from straying on to other pastures.

          BB10, on the contrary, would display both the contact name as well as the #.

          1 0 Reply
    2. J. R. Hartley
      Reply Icon

      Re: life extension - file extension

      God I miss Datatypes on the Amiga. There has never been a more beautiful, elegant operating system before or since.

      1 1 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: life extension - file extension

        Beautiful ?

        really ?

        0 0 Reply
  6. David Hall 1

    Oh the memories

    It was Windows 3.0. My first IBM PC.

    File manager, a bit of messing around, and within 3 minutes I had deleted command.com / autoexec

    Bat etc.

    That was the first, and last time, I broke a PC that I couldn't, myself, subsequently fix.

    23 1 Reply
    1. Sanguma
      Reply Icon

      Re: Oh the memories

      Not much hand-holding those days, eh!

      1 0 Reply
  7. Dave Bell

    This is one of a small group of programs that set the common ground for so much software. Apple were earlier, of course, but so many people have used this that it would be folly to be too different. English has its Great Vowel Shift. For computers, this was part of a similar big change.

    16 0 Reply
  8. SVV

    Surprising Comeback on Windows 10

    Not half as surprising as the comeback of its' much loathed sibling Program Manager, whose collection of icons to start applications made a surprising comeback as the default launch mechanism in Windows 8, except that they weren't icons any more of course, they were "live tiles" and it was called the Start Screen rather than Program Manager.

    Plus ca change.....

    38 3 Reply
    1. GreenBit
      Reply Icon

      Re: Surprising Comeback on Windows 10

      M$ never seemed to learn the lesson that Apple learned at xeorox; users could give a fig about your [..] programs, users want to focus on their own data. I.e., icons for the documents, not for the 'applications'. No one ever sat down at the computer with the express intent of playing with Word or Excel itself. You interact with those programs because they happen to be the tools on your system for revising your reports and spreadsheets.

      It's almost comical to see them return again and again to the program-centric interfaces. Of course they're a bit obsessed with programs, that's what they do, they build programs - but it also illustrates that they've never bothered to really understand their *users*

      23 7 Reply
      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Surprising Comeback on Windows 10

        "No one ever sat down at the computer with the express intent of playing with Word or Excel itself."

        Well, that pair, never. The LibreOffice equivalents are a different matter. If the program icons are sitting on the panel waiting to be clicked it can be the quicker way to bring up a recent document. On the whole I agree with your sentiment, however; the idiocy of UX designers who seem to think forbidding data icons on the desktop is beyond belief.

        12 2 Reply
      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        "Apple learned at xeorox; [..] users want to focus on their own data."

        That's why iOS is so application-centric?

        Only file/document-centric applications are file-first. Other tools are application-centric.

        What is it faster, look for a web-site in a multitude of link icons, or typing a URL? If you need to search a database? Sometimes is also easier to look for the file you need inside an application, that in the file system, because the application understand more about the data than the file system.

        3 0 Reply
    2. Robert Helpmann??
      Reply Icon
      Childcatcher

      Re: Surprising Comeback on Windows 10

      Plus ca change.....

      ...plus ça devient de la merde.

      I so wish OS publishers would treat the GUI as a separate, distinct thing. This applies many times over to Microsoft who have cost untold amounts of time in re-training people do do the exact same jobs they had previously done for years. Every time there is an OS or application upgrade, they push out something new. None of it is great, but at some point it works and those that only use 10% don't need anything more. Those that use the other bits don't get excited over wasting more time over the egos in Redmond imposing another change, or at least not in a good way. Change should not be conflated with progress. Added functionality should not require a complete revamp of the user interface in order to be implemented.

      Also, PowerShell is a command line interface, despite the phrasing in the article that implied otherwise. Like everything else Microsoft, it was a change that no-one was crying out for.

      21 2 Reply
  9. Ellipsis
    Facepalm

    > over 700kB when compiled with modern tools

    Ah, progress…

    16 0 Reply
    1. Phil Endecott
      Reply Icon

      >> over 700kB when compiled with modern tools

      > Ah, progress…

      Anyone know how large the original executable was?

      5 0 Reply
      1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
        Reply Icon

        Winfile.exe version 3.10 dated 10/14/97 3:10a 146,864 bytes

        9 0 Reply
        1. Richard 12 Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          The original was 16bit

          So on 64 bit it should be four times bigger and eight times better, right?

          7 0 Reply
      2. Ellipsis
        Reply Icon
        Windows

        In NT 3.51 it’s 250 KB.

        I don’t think I’ve got a copy of Windows 3.0 to be able to dig out the original. I joined the party around the time of 3.1, though I do just remember Reversi (as somebody mentioned elsewhere).

        4 0 Reply
  10. x 7

    There was something similar in DOS5. Anyone remember what that was called? It was removed in DOS6 because the assumption everyone would be using Windows

    Symantec (or Norton?) Utilities also had a better file manager with it

    7 0 Reply
    1. x 7
      Reply Icon

      doh!

      the DOS5 program was DOSSHELL........

      how could I forget that?

      14 0 Reply

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Probably that extra 'S' is what throws you off..

        8 0 Reply
        1. Not That Andrew
          Reply Icon

          Aah, good old DOS Hell!

          1 0 Reply
  11. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Enjoy Windows Explorer?

    Endure more like.

    Hence the alternatives which are even more important these days given the "Nanny knows best' attitude that eminates from Redmond.

    Not that MS is alone in dumbing their tools down.

    Finder on MacOS is [redacted] and [redacted]. Thankfully there are alternatives there as well.

    22 2 Reply
    1. pscottdv
      Reply Icon

      Re: Enjoy Windows Explorer?

      Don't get me started on the Finder. Never before has a program been so inaptly named. They should call it the "Frustrater".

      7 0 Reply
      1. Dan 55 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Enjoy Windows Explorer?

        Finder on OS X has always been treated like a red-headed stepchild by Apple which is odd since it's the first thing everyone uses.

        1 0 Reply
  12. 45RPM Silver badge

    Xtree or Norton Commander (actually, sod it, Midnight Commander on Linux). Windows FileManager was a necessary evil back in the day (at least, until one had installed a more capable alternative), but nowadays is of historical interest only - especially since its more capable competitors are often either free or abandonware now.

    I quite like muCommander.

    8 1 Reply

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