Folder shows in Recent Places, but not when navigating directly to it

This is on my mom's laptop. It has a fresh Win 7 install on it about four or five months old. It has very little 3rd party software installed on it. Avast, Office 2007, Firefox, Irfanview, and her HP printer/scanner driver are about all I can think of.

A couple of weeks ago she created a new folder one level below her "Documents" library (ex. Documents\Projects\Foo) for a project she's working on. It consists mainly of a couple of Word documents and 150 or so photographs. She had me looking at something tangentially related that turned out to be user error.

But, while looking at that, I noticed something very odd. When navigating to this new work folder in Explorer via the Documents library shortcut in the Navigation Pane, or, when drilling down through the C: drive in the pane, her Foo folder is not visible. But, it shows up in Recent Places.

When entering the Foo folder from Recent Places and then clicking on Projects in the Address Bar to navigate up to the Projects folder, the Foo folder is visible. But, when I navigate to that same Projects folder any other way, I don't see Foo.

I do see all of the other files in the Projects folder. To double-check that I was looking at the same Projects folder I dragged a file to make a copy and then looked at the folder from both directions. That copy showed up both times. So, it's the same Projects folder.

I can't figure out how this is even possible. It should either be always visible or never visible. I can't think of why going through Recent Places would alter the visibility of one subfolder.

Has anyone ever heard of something like this?

Drake Christensen

I'll swing by her place and give that a try.

But, the hidden behavior I'm seeing is inconsistent, depending on how I navigate to the enclosing folder. Is that something you've seen before?

Drake

I'll not speak to the file issue - since you are in good hands with ThrashZone.

I'll just comment that you should consider installing TeamViewer (TV) so that you can support this (and other) computers from most any other computer or smartphone that is online. From your location, you can also reboot the remote computer into the safe mode with networking and reconnect to it. And you can do file transfers to/from the remote computer.

TV is a mature product with good security. The computer will be safe with it running all the time - awaiting your connection. Authentication is protected from brute force schemes by the software automatically increasing the time between allowed connection attempts with each failed try. Of course, an attacker would also need to know the computer's ID code too. So that is an added layer of security too.

You don't need an account with TV in order to connect to others, but it helps - especially when using a smartphone. Accounts are free and they don't spam your e-mail address.

::back to lurking::

*slaps forehead*

I installed Teamviewer at one point. I don't remember if I did so after the Windows reinstall. I keep forgetting about it.

Thanks, I'll try to get myself into the habit of using it.

Drake

TeamViewer is great for saving gas...
...but I'm sure mom's would rather you show up in person from time to time