User Folders - Restore Default Location

Brink · Mar 27, 2011

Hello Kevvyb,

At step 23 in OPTION TWO, you just would need to use the command exactly as it is in the tutorial and not substitute it with your user name instead.

kevvyb · Mar 27, 2011

Hi

Thanks for the quick response. That's what I did originally and so that's why I tried to substitute 'userprofile' for my user name.

I am running elevated cmd prompt and and I am copying and pasting.

Trying again now though.

Can't even get the text to paste into cmd prompt now from website or from text file....

OK missed out step 23 although I think it may have worked for the documents folder. Very odd.

Position now is I have all the folders back in the c:/users/[username] location. All are showing a location tab and the correct location. Just that the ones I wanted to restore back (i.e. the folders on which I had changed the location) don't have the correct icons (apart from the documents folder which appears to have worked.

I wonder if they are now ok and the folder icons will reappear as documents are added... I think I have seen similar behaviour before.

I also have three folders one each for Music, Pictures and Videos in a Temp folder under users which I have been able to delete.

I **think** I may be just about there..... how does it sound?

Brink · Mar 27, 2011

Kevvyb,

It sounds like you are almost there. Since the user folders icons are not there, you can use the tutorial below to restore their icons.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/16312-user-folders-restore-default-icon.html

kevvyb · Mar 27, 2011

Will do. Thanks.

Have a laptop with same windows 7 installation and, you'll never believe this, I can't, there are duplicate user folders on there!! This machine has been fine up until very recently. Only noticed it tonight. So this is not the result of 'improperly moving' the folders.

I am wondering if system drive encryption with truecrypt has caused any problems (on both laptop and desktop). If not that in itself then I wonder if regular syncing, copying, mirroring between the volume encrypted drive on my desktop and system encrypted drive on my desktop and regular syncing and copying of files between desktop and laptop machines has screwed things up somehow?

Anyway thanks for the last link.

Also just noticed that registry on my laptop shows the data for each user folder with %userprofile% and on my desktop it showed as per your screen shot, i,e with my account user name.

Any ideas why that is?

Brink · Mar 27, 2011

Not sure, but it sounds like it's going to be a repeat of what you just did to restore their default locations to get them straightened out as well.

kevvyb · Mar 27, 2011

kevvyb said:
Will do. Thanks.

Also just noticed that registry on my laptop shows the data for each user folder with %userprofile% and on my desktop it showed as per your screen shot, i,e with my account user name.

Any ideas why that is?

Realised that I was in wrong registry folder!!! User Shell Folders not Shell Folders. AAAARRARRRRGG

Brink · Mar 27, 2011

LOL, thank goodness.

fuadkhan · May 18, 2011

Still struggling

doctorJ said:
Brink said:

DoctorJ,

Open a elevated command prompt, then type the command below and press enter to see if that may help bring it out of hiding for you.

attrib +r -s -h %USERPROFILE%\Pictures /S /D

Click to expand...

That worked! For some reason it took a couple of attempts (or maybe the effect just was not immediate). But eventually it worked. Do I need to reset that folder to be a system folder? (thats what the -s does, right? make it not system).

===================
Thank you very much for you help. All this was a fix to a previous botched attempt to move My Pictures to a different drive. I will be more careful this time.

The above is not working for me. When i input it in Command prompt... here is the message I get : Parameter format not correct -
ANd it is not that i am typing it in.. i have copied pasted it.

Can you help.
FK

Brink · May 18, 2011

Hello FK, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Has your Pictures folder already been restored to the default location yet?

Could you post a screenshot of the command prompt showing this to see if I may may be able to spot anything that may be a cause?

kwe · Oct 15, 2011

Brink said:
DoctorJ,

Open a elevated command prompt, then type the command below and press enter to see if that may help bring it out of hiding for you.

attrib +r -s -h %USERPROFILE%\Pictures /S /D

Hi Shawn,

My problem is the same with DoctorJ, only in my case it's Downloads folder, it's hidden.

I've tried attrib +r -s -h %USERPROFILE%\Downloads /S /D[/QUOTE] but didn't worked.

Please help.

kwe · Oct 15, 2011

kwe said:
Brink said:

DoctorJ,

Open a elevated command prompt, then type the command below and press enter to see if that may help bring it out of hiding for you.

attrib +r -s -h %USERPROFILE%\Pictures /S /D

Click to expand...

Hi Shawn,

My problem is the same with DoctorJ, only in my case it's Downloads folder, it's hidden.

I've tried attrib +r -s -h %USERPROFILE%\Downloads /S /D

but didn't worked.

Hi again Shawn,

I just tried again and it worked.
I'm changing the icon right now.
Thank you very much for the help.

Mesakh

Please help.[/QUOTE]

Brink · Oct 15, 2011

You're most welcome Mesakh. I'm happy to hear that it worked for you.

Nurofen · Dec 10, 2011

First: I'd like to say thanks for this tutorial

But sadly I still have some troubles.

The most important issue I'm facing is that, for example in My Music folder, it is said that the folder is empty.
If I search a specific song in the start bar, it does appear to be located in the mentioned folder (in this case "My music"). I guess that none of my files were deleted from the computer but I've no access to them except by searching for them. I certainly not know by heart more than 100 Gs of documents, videos and music files ... How can I make all visible again ?

Second problem is less important but still... The "Users" folder does not appear in C:\. How could I make it visible again?
I can reach it by different ways but I'd like my computer to be back to normal

In advance, thanks again for your future help. Also, sorry if it was easy to find by searching on the websites, I did search during the last two hours already, but get bored.

Kevin W.

PS: I'd like to apologize as well for my certainly not perfect English, I still got to learn the language

Thanks Shawn, you are a true life savior

Brink · Dec 10, 2011

Hello Kevin,

Did you get this issue sorted as well from your other post?

Nurofen · Dec 13, 2011

First, sorry for not answering faster, wasn't in front of a screen for a while (Thanks god, a real life still does exists

).

Well part of it, yes.
Before asking a question/some questions again, I will try by myself a bit more, I think it should be fine now. But thanks a lot for asking.

Brink · Dec 13, 2011

Ok. Thank you for posting back. Just let us know if you have any questions.

acemcbuller · Jan 8, 2012

Some answers at last

Hi Brink

I have had a number of the problems reported in this and other threads and think I've figured them out.

First when moving the folders, My Documents was fine but My Pictures, My Videos and My Music kept creating a duplicate Pictures, Videos and Music folder despite my clicking "Yes" to move all the files.

Trying to delete, rename or take ownership of through windowns or an elevated command prompt always failed.

It aslo prevented right clicking on the My Pictures, My Videos and My Music folder to restoring the location. This also resulted in access denied.

I thought it might be soemthing to do with the choice of whether to overwrite an existing desktop.ini but no.

I was following your instructions for restoring the default location of Windows 7 user folders when I got to step 23:
In elevated command prompt paste:

Code:

attrib +r -s -h %USERPROFILE%\Videos /S /D
attrib +r -s -h %USERPROFILE%\Pictures /S /D
attrib +r -s -h %USERPROFILE%\Music /S /D

These gave an error of "Parameter format not correct"

The reason was that my user name had a space in it. What were needed were quotes:

Code:

attrib +r -s -h "%USERPROFILE%\Videos" /S /D
attrib +r -s -h "%USERPROFILE%\Pictures" /S /D
attrib +r -s -h "%USERPROFILE%\Music" /S /D

Once that worked but then I had to do another user and got a different error

Code:

Access denied - C:\Users\John Smith\Videos
Access denied - C:\Users\John Smith\Pictures
Access denied - C:\Users\John Smith\Music

Eventaully I came acroos Unlocker
I installed it and ran it against each of my folders.
It showed that they were double locked by wmpnetwk.exe
I first tried to stop the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service but it wouldn't die (I expect it would have if I had disabled it and rebooted).
So I used Unlocker to unlock each folder.
As soon as I did, it disappeared from both C:\Users\(user-name) location and Start Menu (shell:UsersFilesFolder) location.
That left just the correct My folder in just the Start Menu location and nothing in the C:\Users location!
With it gone the restore feature also works.

I hope that help prevent someone else from pulling their hair out like I have been for past few hours.

James

R0adking · Jan 11, 2012

Restoring problem

22. Open a elevated command prompt (Right click -> Run as administrator).

Have successfully restored My Pictures but My Music is now a folder without the Location tab and the command prompt says 'file not file'

Any idea about what I've done wrong?

Cheers

Brink · Jan 11, 2012

R0adking said:
22. Open a elevated command prompt (Right click -> Run as administrator).

Click to expand...

Have successfully restored My Pictures but My Music is now a folder without the Location tab and the command prompt says 'file not file'

Any idea about what I've done wrong?

Cheers

Hello R0adking, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Double check while doing OPTION TWO again in case you may have made a mistake while doing it the first time for My Music.

R0adking · Jan 13, 2012

Brink said:
R0adking said:

22. Open a elevated command prompt (Right click -> Run as administrator).

Click to expand...

Have successfully restored My Pictures but My Music is now a folder without the Location tab and the command prompt says 'file not file'

Any idea about what I've done wrong?

Cheers

Click to expand...

Hello R0adking, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Double check while doing OPTION TWO again in case you may have made a mistake while doing it the first time for My Music.

Hi Brink

Double checked and doing everything correct. In the end did a system restore and am back to the default locations now!

Cheers

John

User Folders - Restore Default Location

To Restore Default Location of User Folders in Properties

To Restore Default Location of User Folders using a BAT file

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