Win 7 Problem - Moving Location of My Documents

hitman

hitman

hitman

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I'm sure this is a very simple problem but I'm a bit mystified by the solution.
This morning I decided to change the location of the my documents folder from the C drive which is my new SSD to a partition on my new mechanical hard drive partition F.
During the procedure I was asked if I wanted to move all of my documents but I wanted to leave some folders associated games on the C drive which I did.
Although the documents are moved across they do not seem to have any location assigned to them so if I wanted to move them back I couldn't. Also in the new partition folders are labelled separately and not under a my documents folder. If I click on libraries then documents are there but is no subcategory for my documents, which I wanted to keep but with the new drive location.
I hope I don't seem to confused but I need some help:)

also the new drive location is showing 100% free space which seems to indicate that the files haven't transferred across correctly ??
 
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moving the location of my documents is a total pain in the ass, you need to edit hundreds of registry keys and system associations otherwise everything just breaks.

i strongly recommend that you don't continue your efforts.
 
^um.....:confused:

mydocs.png


windows has had this same dialog since windows 2000...
 
Aod said:
moving the location of my documents is a total pain in the ass, you need to edit hundreds of registry keys and system associations otherwise everything just breaks.

i strongly recommend that you don't continue your efforts.
Click to expand...

what? works for me every time.

in some cases, you can get some weirdness going on with some folders having two names. a filesystem name, and a display name. to fix this, delete the "desktop.ini" file in that folder, and hey presto, the filesystem name is the only one used.

otherwise, you can have two folders in the same place with the same name. this can and has happened to me when I tried to move docs/change shortcuts, etc.
 
In Win7 you don't need to do any of that at all.

Just right click the "documents" library and add the mechanical drive location to it then remove the old location - job done.

Do the same for Video and Music library.

This will means the game save folders etc will remain as is, just your documents, videos, photos, music etc will be pointing to the new drive.

This is the whole point of the library system because on Vista you had to relocate as mentioned by others above.
 
Just right click the "documents" library and add the mechanical drive location to it then remove the old location - job done.
Click to expand...

This is what I've done but as I say in my first post, even though "my documents" have been sent to the new drive, they have not been assigned a location :(
ie they dont show up on the F drive and the folder "my documents" has disappeared to be replaced by the individual folders. When I go to "Documents", the folder "My Documents" no longer displays.

Hope this makes some sense??
 
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hitman said:
This is what I've done but as I say in my first post, even though "my documents" have been sent to the new drive, they have not been assigned a location :(
ie they dont show up on the F drive and the folder "my documents" has disappeared to be replaced by the individual folders. When I go to "Documents", the folder "My Documents" no longer displays.

Hope this makes some sense??
Click to expand...

Yes, you just create a folder on the drive called My Documents under the parent folder on the root and point to that.

Also on the "Documents" button on the taskbar you right click it to get the menu, right click "Windows Explorer" at the bottom then Select "Properties" and in Target box add a line like;

%windir%\explorer.exe M:\My Documents

This means that When Clicking the Documents button on the taskbar it will tell explorer to load my chosen Documents store which is my other drive where I have my documents.

My Drive's structure in relation to this is:

M:\My Documents\XXX

Where XXX is My Documents, My Videos, My Music, My Pictures etc etc.

It's really quite a logical way as long as you get your head around how Win7's document store handling works compared to XP and Vista as it moves away from virtual folders now.
 
"My Documents" no longer exists and when clicking on documents it just links to the folders shown. The folders of docs in the other drive don't appear. mrk, does that mean I need to now create a my documents folder as you've outlined and if so what about the other fields in the short cut box??

screenshot1ry.png
 
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Yes, you just create a folder on the drive called My Documents under the parent folder on the root and point to that.
Click to expand...

Just tried to do this and a message comes up - my documents folder already exists !! But where??
 
Yes, changing the ProfilesDirectory key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList works in Windows 7 for any user account created after the registry modification

I was looking for an easy way to do this and that key above proved excellent. Basically I build up windows with an account then get it all ready and then change the above to say D:\User Data for example. Then reboot and create the user/s who are gonna use the PC. When they log in it automatically sticks it all in that location, also hidden settings go there to so things like PST files etc are also in that location so you dont have to worry about anything being on the C drive.
 
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hitman said:
"My Documents" no longer exists and when clicking on documents it just links to the folders shown. The folders of docs in the other drive don't appear. mrk, does that mean I need to now create a my documents folder as you've outlined and if so what about the other fields in the short cut box??

screenshot1ry.png
Click to expand...

Somewhere, somehow you've done something wrong it seems because when I click on Documents (Libraries\Documents) it loads M:\My Documents\.
 
wheelscene said:
Yes, changing the ProfilesDirectory key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList works in Windows 7 for any user account created after the registry modification

I was looking for an easy way to do this and that key above proved excellent. Basically I build up windows with an account then get it all ready and then change the above to say D:\User Data for example. Then reboot and create the user/s who are gonna use the PC. When they log in it automatically sticks it all in that location, also hidden settings go there to so things like PST files etc are also in that location so you dont have to worry about anything being on the C drive.
Click to expand...

I've always used junctions to move my profile to another disk. It'll 'trick' Windows into thinking your profile is still located at C:\Users\Username, but in fact it'll be D:\Users\Username.

When changing the above registry key have you ever noticed anything being written to the incorrect location? For example if an application is programmed to write to "%HomeDrive\Users\%Username%" then the files are going to be written to C:\Users\Username regardless of the registry key above.

OP, if you are just looking to move the location of your Documents/Pictures/Videos and aren't worried about profile settings/application data then you can simply change the location of the library. As mrk mentioned below it's simple & effective.
 
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System restore back then just add a new library location to the other drive removing the old one - simple and effective :)
 
Except I hadn't set-up back up so would have to be a fresh install. I may well do this anyway but going to sleep on it :)
thanks for your help btw :)
 
System restore disabled?

Risky business
Click to expand...

Weird - it looked like it was disabled but today managed to carry out a system restore and have got "my documents" back and will try moving their location tomorrow :)
 
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