Give junction point Special Folder properties?

Unashamed bump-because-surely-someone-must-know-even-with-410-views.

Hi Clonkex,

You didn't mention anything about icons not showing on the Junction points, regardless, I'll explain how it's done to get icons working on them.

Simply give the Junction points either a Read-only or System attribute (preferably read-only) and the icons on the Junction points should match up with the target.

Example of giving a Junction point (or Symbolic Link) a read-only attribute:

Code:

Attrib <PathOfJunctionPt> +R /L

Now to make the names look proper, it's going to be tricky. Desktop.ini files do not affect the display name of junction points. Here, you can only do something fancy:

Step 1) Set a hidden attribute to each of your junction points.
Step 2) Create new junction points that point to these hidden junction points.
Step 3) Now you may rename the new juntion points to whatever you like.

Take for instance:
D:\Somepath\My Music
and
D:\Somepath\Music

Where both are Junction points. The 'Music' junction will be hidden but still be seen/accessable by programs. The 'My Music' junction (which you should create) that you will see and use, will point to the 'Music' junction which in turn points to the real folder.

Remember to set a Read-only attribute to each of the junctions if you want the icons to display.


To answer your actual question, but

Clonkex said:

Is it possible to make a junction point look exactly like a My Music folder, including the fake name?

No. It's not possible. A Junction point is not a folder.


As for the little annoying blue arrow on the virtural folders, I'm sure someone else in this forum can hopefully butt in and give a suggestion on how to remove it.

Wow, those were fast replies! Awesome, thanks for the help!

You didn't mention anything about icons not showing on the Junction points

No I didn't, but I'm glad you told me anyway because I just noticed the icon is only working for one of the folders. :)

Desktop.ini files do not affect the display name of junction points.

So THAT'S how those folders know what to call themselves!! I'd been searching for ages, trying to work out what it was that identified them! Didn't help that, while I've seen Desktop.ini files before, I've never known what they were for.

The 'Music' junction will be hidden but still be seen/accessable by programs. The 'My Music' junction (which you should create) that you will see and use, will point to the 'Music' junction which in turn points to the real folder.

That's brilliant! What a good idea! I can't believe I didn't think of that. The only disadvantage is that when I point new programs to the music folder I will have to manually type 'Music' into the address bar if I want to allow future compatibility if I were to move my music folder back to my SSD. Small price to pay, however - very good idea, thank you!

Hey guys, you don't mind if I "butt in" do ya?

Certainly not - butt away :P

To remove the shortcut arrow:

Hmm... that removes the arrow for all shortcuts, does it not? I would like to keep my shortcut arrows for actual shortcuts, just not for these specific junction points. Asking a lot, I realise, but you never know what clever little tricks some Windows experts have up their sleeves so it's always worth asking :P

If you wanted to streamline the look even further as in hiding the Icon:

lol I don't even know why you'd want that!

There is an extensive repository of Tutorials here, I find its easier to look for them using the Tutorials Quick Reference Index.

Cool thanks, that's useful!

Clonkex, hows that Samsung running, did you have any problems connecting it?

It's really great! No problems whatsoever! Super-speedy, and Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD did a perfect job :)

So now I'm going to go do some quick experimentation before I go to bed. Hopefully your solutions will result is a near-perfect end product. At the very least, they'll do the main things I wanted: Correct visual AND actual folder names and correct icons. The shortcut icons... I can definitely put up with

I won't mark as Solved until I've got the best possible solution (and I know it all works!) but I'm pretty sure you've solved my biggest problems. Cheers!

I put together a quick batch to do it for me and it works beautifully! Have a look:

Code:

@echo off

echo Creating program-accessible junction point links...
echo.

mklink c:\users\%USERNAME%\Music e:\users\%USERNAME%\music /J
mklink c:\users\%USERNAME%\Pictures e:\users\%USERNAME%\pictures /J
mklink c:\users\%USERNAME%\Videos e:\users\%USERNAME%\videos /J

echo.
echo Creating visible junction point links...
echo.

mklink "c:\users\%USERNAME%\My Music" e:\users\%USERNAME%\music /J
mklink "c:\users\%USERNAME%\My Pictures" e:\users\%USERNAME%\pictures /J
mklink "c:\users\%USERNAME%\My Videos" e:\users\%USERNAME%\videos /J

echo.
echo Setting attributes...
echo.

attrib c:\users\%USERNAME%\Music +H /L
attrib c:\users\%USERNAME%\Pictures +H /L
attrib c:\users\%USERNAME%\Videos +H /L
attrib "c:\users\%USERNAME%\My Music" +R /L
attrib "c:\users\%USERNAME%\My Pictures" +R /L
attrib "c:\users\%USERNAME%\My Videos" +R /L

echo Done! Now restart explorer (or log out and in).
echo.
pause

That was quite quick of you to piece together that script.

Clonkex said:

So THAT'S how those folders know what to call themselves!

There's a reason for everything.
Also, by "Special Folder Properties" in the thread title, I guess you were refering to these 'desktop.ini' files -- which, no, cannot be 'given'/applied to Junction points (exception: the custom icon setting in the file which does take affect on Junctions (if the junction has a Read-only or System attribute of course)).


Anyway, glad you sound very satisfied.

Please mark the thread as Solved once you feel that all your questions have been answered.

You may post back any time should you requre further assistance on this topic.

I would suggest to go to the tutorial and submit your question there, if anyone would know it would be Brink.

Done! :)