Can't name a folder in my document "My Pictures"???!

Monsoon · 08 Nov 2010

Bare Foot Kid said:

Monsoon said:

Bare Foot Kid said:

But the label "My Pictures" has been in use by MS for years.

That pic was not taken from within "My Documents".

The "My Documents" folder in my computer is empty. And to be clear, I am speaking of the "My Documents" as is accessed by way of Start > My Documents.

I don't know if I deleted the "My Pictures" folder from "My Documents" during the install, but at the moment the "My Documents" folder is EMPTY.

And when I try to put a folder named "My Pictures" into the "My Documents" folder, it says there is already a folder in there named "My Pictures", when in fact the folder is EMPTY.

I'm aware of that, my point is that you are trying to nane a file to a name reserved for MS use.

I'm currently on my XP drive.

In XP, I can delete the My Pictures folder, and recreate it without a single issue.

Now, do you have a reasonable explanation why that shouldn't work in 7?

For that matter, is there a reasonable explanation why any deleted folder from documents, on any operating system ever coded, cannot be deleted and recreated?

We're not talking about a system folder in the root directory here.

THIS IS DOCUMENTS.

Barman58 · 08 Nov 2010

The folder"my pictures" is a reserved folder name in win7 as this was used as a subdirectory in old Microsoft operating systems such as XP.

In order to facilitate older badly written applications that expect there always to be a my pictures within the my documents folder win7 uses junction point to redirect these applications to the correct folder Username\pictures.

This is a system that creates a virtual folder structure using junction points which fools older programs into thinking that they are working on XP

due to the way that this virtualisation works the system sees a virtual "My Documents" present in the actual my documents folder which prevents the user from recreating it

Monsoon · 08 Nov 2010

So then that's it? You delete it, your screwed?

I can just see the microsoft guys sitting around having a big old chuckle on this one. "Hahhahahaaaaa, this will teach those tweakers to mess with us! If they want that folder back, they can just do a reinstall!"

Ztruker · 08 Nov 2010

I wonder if this has something to do with the various desktop.ini files scattered everywhere?

In My Documents, desktop.ini looks like this for me: (note first line is blank)

[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21770
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-112
IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=-235

In the My Pictures folder, desktop.ini looks like this: (note first line is blank)

[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21779
InfoTip=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-12688
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-113
IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=-236

This is aa SWAG, but I'm wondering if some other folder under My Documents has the data I have for My Pictures and is thus thought to be a My Pictures folder by Win 7?

mborner · 09 Nov 2010

I ran a backup once and got the error message, "Windows backup could not locate C:\documents\my pictures, some files may not have been backed up" I simply recreated the folder, no issues.