Invalid junction after moving "My Documents"?

Batch said:

I've just come across the exact same situation and I can confirm that it is left over when you do a Move of My Documents. I have tried it several times (after repeatedly doing image restores). I assume it is something that Microsoft never addressed.

My guess is that the vast majority of folks that do such a Move are never aware of the redundant Junction. Unless they go into C:\Users\XXX (with "Hide protected operating system files" disabled) and click on the My Documents, you don't tend to come across it. And unless they run into issues with software accessing the junction via hard coded paths in software it will never become an issue.

At the moment I haven't decided whether to just leave this junction (does anything really use it?), delete it, or delete it AND create a new one pointing to D:\XXXData\Documents.

Bad written software uses it! Software meant for winxp

A bit more info. on a couple of aspects:-

I've also just done another image restore and tried moving the Documents folder to another path on the C: partition to see whether the My Documents junction would be updated in such a case (as I wondered whether it was just not updated if the Move was to another drive / partition). No joy - same result as before.

Also, the original Documents folder contained junctions pointing back at My Music, My Pictures and My Videos. These are lost during the Move.

You made an interesting final observation there - I just confirmed that for a different user on my system, one I rarely use which takes up very little space and which I simply left on the C partition, there are indeed hidden junctions in My Documents for My Music, My Pictures and My Videos just as you describe. Those were not recreated in the new location when My Documents was moved on my system, either.

This looks like another "junction bug" when moving My Documents. I have fortunately never had any problem with their absence.

The procedure Kaktussoft described to fix the My Documents junction worked for me (albeit with the one permissions problem I mentioned that I worked around and described), and I've never had any problems since.

So I'd recommend it if you want to clean up as I did.

I suppose I should also now add the 3 missing junctions you just discovered. I would imagine adding those junctions would be absolutely harmless - if software is looking there, they'll find the junctions, and if not, they'll just sit there harmlessly.

Good luck, and thanks for confirming the problem. I never tried to confirm for myself whether it was a bug or a mistake that I made, and you've made it clear now that it's a Microsoft bug. And thanks for adding more to the overall information about this.