Problem: Moving 'My Documents' on to E:

Larry365 · 15 Aug 2010 at 03:08

Sup.
So the first thing I do after installing windows, is move all document folders away from the drive that is hosting Windows, and into my secondary drive, in this case E:

However I have made a bit of a mistake.

When it comes to choosing a new location for a folder (lets take 'My Documents' as an example), it isn't just a case of selecting a drive you wish to move it to as you are not really relocating the folder, more the contents of it and the default path to be used from then on. You actually have to make a new folder in the destination drive and then select that for the relocation of 'My Documents'

Bare with me...

So basically I wanted to moved 'My Documents' to drive E: but I didn't create a new folder, I simpy selected E: and hoped it would just move the folder in its entirety. What has actually happened is all of the contents of 'My Documents' have just been spread out over E: (including game saves) and these cannot be moved into a new folder as their paths have now been set within application files etc.

Now drive E:\ has been set as default for 'My Documents' and I cannot see a way to reverse this process. If you go onto properties of E: and go on the location tab, you have the option to restore to default (which is C:\Users\****\Documents) but I cannot apply these new settings for two reasons.
1) It wont actually let me. Error message "Failed to build the list of regular subfolders under "E:\System Volumes Information" Access is denied."
and
2) If there was a way around the above, it would mean moving the entire contents of my E: drive (around 650GB into C:\Users\****\Documents) which cannot happen.

So, first of all, thanks for taking the time to read, I hope I have made myself clear and secondly, is there anyone who sees my problem and either knows a solution or could suggest something. I basically want 'My documents' back to its default location, so that I can relocate it properly. Or of course, relocated it from where it currently is. Thank you for your help!

vsmora · 15 Aug 2010 at 03:58

Edit it in the registry?
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

Larry365 · 15 Aug 2010 at 05:16

vsmora said:
Edit it in the registry?
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

Ok, I've given this a shot unfortunately it hasnt solved the issue. It seems to just add the E:\Documents folder to the Documents Library. Which does not give it the true 'Documents' value. That is, appliations that use 'My Documents' folder do not recognise this new location to save/load files.

Strange though, as comparing it to the other folders, the regedit entry is the same. Thanks

vsmora · 15 Aug 2010 at 06:02

Also try:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DocFolderPaths

I'd suggest that you only fiddle enough so that you can get to the MyDocs->Properties dialog and change it in the normal way to ensure it has been registered properly.

trentlad · 15 Aug 2010 at 07:00

Are you using W7?

Regardless you should be able to pick up each folder that was relocated and move them into a My Documents folder. Then point your My Documents to that particular folder.

I really don't know if you can stop your games from saving to that location however. I'd love to find a way to do that, it's pretty annoying when the game saves aren't stored in the game instillation folder.

Larry365 · 15 Aug 2010 at 13:17

trentlad said:
Are you using W7?

Regardless you should be able to pick up each folder that was relocated and move them into a My Documents folder. Then point your My Documents to that particular folder.

Yeh, I'm running Win7 Ult64bit. What you are saying can be done, but it doesnt change the path for the "root" documents folder. It doesnt help that Win7 has Libraries called documents and then folders call documents inside those libraries. Makes the whole thing hard to explain.

vsmora said:
Also try: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DocFolderPaths

It would appear that this registry entry does not appear in this location. I have run a search on the entire registry and tried to see if google can shed some light on it being missing. Maybe this is a Win7 thing, as google returns mostly tutorials for XP.

SiriusB · 15 Aug 2010 at 13:52

trentlad said:
I really don't know if you can stop your games from saving to that location however. I'd love to find a way to do that, it's pretty annoying when the game saves aren't stored in the game instillation folder.

MS doesn't want applications writing to their own folders since it breaks them when running under a Standard User account.

No matter what type of account you have, any application you run is guaranteed to be able to write to your personal folders - hence why applications and games save stuff there.

trentlad · 15 Aug 2010 at 15:43

Interesting, thanks SirusB.

OP - I literally just changed all mine last night.

I opened up My Computer and expanded the 'Libraries' list to show Documents, Music, Pictures and Video. Right click on the first item and select 'Properties' and remove all folders that appear in the 'Library locations' list, then click 'Include a folder...' and add your folder.

Repeat for each item in the library and you're done. Simple.

That should solve any windows linking issues to your My Documents except for any game saves. Is it really only the game saves that you're trying to move?

Larry365 · 15 Aug 2010 at 16:14

trentlad said:
Interesting, thanks SirusB.

OP - I literally just changed all mine last night.

I opened up My Computer and expanded the 'Libraries' list to show Documents, Music, Pictures and Video. Right click on the first item and select 'Properties' and remove all folders that appear in the 'Library locations' list, then click 'Include a folder...' and add your folder.

Repeat for each item in the library and you're done. Simple.

That should solve any windows linking issues to your My Documents except for any game saves. Is it really only the game saves that you're trying to move?

Yeh this is one way to do it but it doesnt do the job properly. If you go into C:\Users\*username*\ -you can change the location of these folders entirely (baring in mind these are the root of all folders, litterally where things are saved, not some ghost image of the pics/vids etc). If you do this, be sure to make a folder within the drive, for which to move root folders locations, or you are going to have the problem I have.

Doing it in the way described above means all current applications will know exactly where everything is, and all future apps will save to here by default. The way you have done this, they will not.

Thanks

Larry365 · 15 Aug 2010 at 16:40

Ok. From what I can tell, I have fixed the issue. While HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders existed in both win7 and xp, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer\DocFolderPaths; didn't. So I figured that win7 may have an equivalent and came across H.CUR.USER****\Explorer\User Shell Folders. While this isnt the win7 equivalent, modifying the info in this entry and the shell folders, it resolved the issue.

Thanks everyone for the help.