Remember each folder's settings doesn't make any difference with respect to the Status Bar on any of the widely varied types of Windows XP / IE6 machines that my wife and I own at my office and at our home. I can have a Status Bar show up on each and every manually opened IE or Explorer window regardless of whether or not the remember setting is being used.
I have only seen this issue on a couple of Windows XP systems that other people asked me to look at. In neither case was the status bar, or lack thereof, the reason I was asked to examine the problem system. These computers had other problems, and I just happened to notice the lack of the status bar in both Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. In both cases I shut down all open instances (other than the desktop) of the Explorer process. I opened a single instance of Windows Explorer by opening My Computer. I selected the view I wanted, including the presence of a status bar, and used the Apply to All Folders button. I did notice that, if no changes are made to the settings on the View tab of the Folder Options dialog the use of the Apply to All Windows button accomplishes nothing. I had to change something in the scrollable window, AND I had to click the Apply button BEFORE clicking the Apply to All Folders button. (It was NOT necessary to effect an actual change in the scrollable window. I could check and then uncheck a single checkbox so that no real change had been made, and then click Apply, and then click Apply to All Folders, and the Status Bar change was made effective for all future instances of Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer.
One of the people whose computers I "fixed" with this method called me back to say that the absent Status Bar issue had reappeared. As nearly as we were able to figure during our phone conversation the only significant operation she performed on the system between the time the Status Bar worked properly and the time it stopped working properly was the use of a registry cleaning application. She was able to restore proper Status Bar functionality by following the steps I had used. But she had encountered other problems since using the cleaner, so I didn't think it wise to ask her to use it again to see if she could cause the Status Bar problem to come back.
This is a very widely discussed issue here and elsewhere online. IMO this almost has to be caused either by a common system configuration tweak that conflicts with the Status Bar setting OR by the use of some common piece of (third party?) software. People far more learned and experienced with this OS than I are baffled by it. So I don't think this is a problem with an obvious methodologic solution. I think something that's used commonly by other folks, and never used by me, is causing the issue. Whether that something is a part of the OS or a third party program I don't have a clue.
- prosaic
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