Windows – How to disable automatic search in Windows Explorer

How frequently do you Search? (I ask since you mention that as the source of the problem) Windows Explorer retains a fixed number of customizations.

TweakUI is one way to view/modify this value:

From the Microsoft Knowledgebase is this information for manually editing that value:

By default, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 remember each folder's view settings and customizations. This data is limited to 400 folders and is stored in the following registry keys:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 instead use the following registry key to store this information:

• HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell

To increase the number of folders that Windows can remember the view settings for, create a DWORD value named BagMRU Size in each of these registry keys, and set its value data to the number of folders that you want Windows to remember the settings for. For example, if you set the value to 5000, Windows can remember the settings for 5000 folders.

And lastly, this article discusses what to do when your "view settings or customizations for a folder are lost or incorrect."

I finally found it by scouring the registry of one of my old computer.

The registry key I was looking for is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\DisabledHotkeys

If it's not present, create a new Expandable String Value and add any characters you don't want windows explorer to bind.

For example, setting DisabledHotkeys to 12 will prevent explorer from binding windowskey+1 and windowskey+2