My Documents/Pictures/Video Location Change

[StephenJK]

I have a new laptop, a Dell Precision M4400. The first thing I did was a format and a clean install with Windows 7 Ultimate. So far, so good, and it certainly seems to be an improvement over XP.

Being an oldtimer, I like to partition the hard drive and put all of the data folders onto the D: drive. It makes it easy to backup, and lets me reload the operating system without losing information.

Windows 7 lets you change the location of the user folders My Documents, My Music, My Pictures and My Videos. I used that feature to move all to the D: drive.

Since then, in Windows Explorer there folders that were moved are shown as multiples of the D: drive.

In Computer > Local Disk C: > Users > My Account >

the folders are listed as below:

AppData
Contacts
Desktop
Downloads
Favorites
Links
Saved Games
Searches

If, however, I click on my account shown under Desktop in the Explorer, the folders are:

AppData
Contacts
Data D:
Data D:
Data D:
Data D:
Desktop
Downloads
Favorites
Links
Saved Games
Searches

It's not a big deal, but it does seem a bit odd. The location option no longer appears when I right-click the moved folders, so it seems that their existence as those default folders is no longer valid, or it isn't possible to restore them to their original location.

I thought of deleting my account, and creating a new one but that seems a bit extreme as all other functions are good. The registry does show the My Documents, etc. as all being the D: drive, but editing that to the original location does nothing.

As I say, it's certainly something I can live with, but if anyone has a suggestion, fire away.....

Stephen

 

[Brink]

Hello Stephen, and welcome to Seven Forums.

It seems like the WARNING under step 9 in the tutorial below is what happened to you.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html


Backup the contents of these folder to be safe, restore the default user folder locations, and delete any user folder that does not have the "Location" tab in it's properties windows. Now repeat moving the default location for the user folders, be sure to use the tutorial above to not avoid the issue in the warning at step 9.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[StephenJK]

Shawn,

Thank you for the quick response, I'll try that right away.

 

[StephenJK]

Problem Solved!

Shawn,

It worked like a charm. Where I made my mistake the first time in moving the folders was with not creating another folder with a similar name first. I dumped everything to the D: drive, so that was what the folder reference was pointing to......

 

[Brink]

Ah, I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted out. Thank you for posting back your findings.