Home > Tips > Disable Breadcrumbs in Windows 7 or Vista, Enable in XP

Disable Breadcrumbs in Windows 7 or Vista, Enable in XP

July 1st, 2009 Author: Thai Categories: Tips
breadcrumbs

Many of you may have notice the address bar starting with Windows Vista having a new unique way of letting you finding out where you are in Windows Explorer. While most will welcome this change, some of you old school geeks who would rather have the full path with all the c:\ and \, would love to find a way to get this back. You can do it by pressing Alt+D in the window but that can get tedious.

The quickest solution is to install AveNoBreadCrumb

Just unzip the folder and run the AveNoBreadCrumb.exe file to disable the breadcrumbs. You will need to close out of the current explorer window to have it take effect. If you would like this to be a permanent thing, copy the AveNoBreadCrumb.exe to a place in your ‘Program Files’ and place a shortcut to that file in your startup folder.

If you have Windows XP and would like to have breadcrumbs, then download QTAddressBar

Just install the program and restart the computer. When you come back, right click on the toolbars area of a new explorer windows and deslect the address bar and select QT Breadcrumbs Address Bar.

breadcrumbs2

Here are the two addresses to the programs mentioned in this post.

http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/download-qtadd

http://www.howtogeek.com/geekers/AveNoBreadcrumb.zip

  1. November 11th, 2009 at 20:16 | #1

    I couldn’t get it done in windows 7 ultimate 64bits. :/

    it should work only in win7 32bits… :(

  2. November 11th, 2009 at 20:17 | #2

    What do you mean when you say “put a shortcut on start-up folder”?

  3. November 11th, 2009 at 20:26 | #3

    This seems to be the only post in the entire internets that cover this issue…

  4. Wiz
    December 16th, 2009 at 13:37 | #4

    This doesn’t work for me. All it does is blank out the address line so that not even the default breadcrumbs display.

  5. March 24th, 2010 at 09:00 | #5

    This doesn’t work for me. All it does is blank out the address line so that not even the default breadcrumbs display.

  6. April 16th, 2010 at 03:59 | #6

    I think everyone here is aware of your passion about the old style user interface. I have already given you the information for providing feedback to the product team. Although you are welcome to discuss any subject you wish here, as long as it pertains to the Windows 7 beta.

  7. July 1st, 2010 at 05:40 | #7

    The problem with the breadcrumbs is that if you have a lot of deep folders with long names, it’s very difficult to use them since they run off the screen as in the top screenshot.

  8. July 22nd, 2010 at 23:30 | #8

    Hi great title sharing telling about all is IT level telling about Disable Breadcrumbs in Windows 7 or Vista, Enable in XP thanks for it.

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