Set up different views for open and closed folders in Explorer

                 You do not find Windows’ way of displaying open and closed folders in the tree structure of Explorer clear enough. You thus want to use other, more meaningful icons.
                 For this, open the Registry Editor, click ‘Start’ and enter ‘regedit’ in the ‘Programs | Search Files’ field. You then see the search results directly in the start menu. Then right click ‘regedit.exe’ under ‘Programs’ and select the context command ‘Run as administrator’. This instruction must be confirmed via the Control Panel and authorized by selecting an account with administrator rights and entering the relevant password.

                 Then  browse  to  the  left  side  of  the editor in the tree structure to the key ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons’. Now right click a free point and select the context command ‘New | Character String’. Overwrite the name suggested by Windows  with  ‘4’  so  that  an  internal  key  is defi ned for the open folders. The closed 
folders are represented by the number ‘3’.
                 Open the new character string by double-clicking your entry and enter the complete path to the ‘shell32.dll’ fi le as ‘Value’. You can access the icons in this file by entering the internal index value of the desired icon right after the path and separating it with a comma. For instance, use ‘%SystemRoot%/system32\SHELL32.dll,144’ in order to replace the icon of an open folder with a red checkmark in Windows Explorer. 
                  After making these changes, close the Registry Editor with ‘File | Close’ and then restart the system.
                 Also, if you want to know which icons the file ‘shell32.dll’ contains, here is a small trick: Right click any folder and select the context command ‘Properties’. In the ‘Customize’ tab, click the ‘Choose icon’ button. The next dialog box displays all the icons from the ‘shell32.dll’ file. You still need to count the position of an icon in order to define its index value. Start with 0 and go in ascending order to reach the correct icon. Since Windows 7 lists icons in four rows, the second icon in the fi rst row has the number ‘4’.