"Failed to build the list of regular subfolders under..etc"

dsim · 08 Nov 2012

I have encountered the message..."Failed to build the list of regular subfolders under..etc". I t arose when I was trying to assist a friend, and the history is that he had a PC with a single 80GB PATA hard drive, with XP and a separate data partition.
We added, in a dual boot arrangement, W7 Home, and relocated My Documents to the Data partition. He then had the use of this partition for storage and opening of documents when using either operating system.

Recently space became a problem, so a second PATA 60GB drive was installed. When trying to relocate My Documents from the existing data partition to the new drive, we got the "Failed....." message. We then cut all from the old partition and pasted in it the new drive, so that if we tried to return to the default location there would not be a problem of trying to fit too much back to the C drive. Then tried Restore Default - same failure message.

The process of relocation seems similar to the first method in your tutorial on Restore the default location. My questions are:
1.Does the arrangement of having the data location for two operating systems cause this?
2.Would method 2 work?
3. Would a repair-install return the location to the C drive - although involving quite a bit of time.

I am assuming that when the folder location is back in C, It can then be relocated to the new drive, and new saved files would then all go there.

Would very much appreciate advice.

dsim · 14 Nov 2012

I see that this was moved to a new thread 5 days ago, but I haven't been able tom find that thread. However

This problem is now solved. It did not involve any of the three questions I posed. The answers to these are
1. That two operating systems shared the same folder location for My Documents did not cause this problem.
2. It was not first necessary to try method 2
3. Did a repair install on a test machine with W7 – the change of location of the My Documents folder was treated as a user setting, and the default location was not reset.
The following is what was done. The start point was a setup with two drives, in the first there were two OSs, and a data partition E, and the second was an empty drive, J.
The first step was to create a folder My Documents in J. Then cut all folders/files in E and paste into the new folder in J.
In Windows Explorer, expanded Documents and then right clicked My Documents, selected Properties, Location, Restore Default and Apply. When the option to move all contents opened, selected No instead of Yes.
Clicked OK, and the location of the folder changed back to C,
Right clicked again, and then chose Properties, Location and the Move. Browsed to J, and clicked Apply, OK.
All the existing content (already) in J was accessible, and new items were saved there.
The E partition was deleted, and the resulting unallocated space merged into C