Vista - Personal User Folder - Restore Missing Folder

Hello Kenny, and welcome to Vista Forums.

I would first double check using OPTION THREE to make sure that the Pictures folder was set with it's default location. You might also check to see if the files in the folder may have been set to be hidden by mistake as well.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

thank you Shawn, i'm at work now, but if i remember correctly there are two folders for each thing 1 blue or green and 1 yellow, i.e. 2-music folders, 2-picture folders...hmm

If that is the case, then backup anything that you do not want to lose in them to be safe. Afterwards, make sure that they all are set with there default locations in OPTION THREE of that tutorial above, then delete the folders and restart the computer. It may take a couple of restarts, but it should restore the folders back to default where you can then copy the backups back to the folders.

Hi,

I'm not sure if I'm having a problem or not, everything is working fine. BUT...I've noticed just recently that my Vista 32bit has two 'Documents' folders. When I go to start and click on 'Michael' I see the usual 'Desktop', 'Documents', 'Downloads', 'Favorites', 'Music', etc. But if I open the 'Downloads' icon, I see the couple folders I made 'Demos1', Demos2', but now there is also a 'Documents' folder, with all the exact files as in the original 'Documents' folder. Same number & size of files. I used to just download files off the internet directly into the 'Downloads' folder. But because there got to be so many files in there, I made subfolders, so I know that there wasn't a 'Documents' folder in the 'Downloads' folder. Are these 'Documents' files and folders duplicates, using up more space? Or is it just reading off the other 'Documents' folder?

If I go to the 'Properties' section of EACH of the 'Documents' folders, and click on Location and then click on 'Restore Default', they both change from

c:\Users\Michael\Downloads\Documents to c:\Users\Michael\Documents

this tells me that probably somewhere along the line the 'Documents' folder location got changed. Is that correct? If so, I have no idea how that happened.

My last question is:

Is it worth the trouble it might cause to do any of the things you have described in the rest of this thread, to change it back? I'm not having any trouble at all. It just kind of bothers me that this happened.

I did check the registry...there is no listing of the 'Documents' or 'Downloads' folders as there is for 'Desktop' 'Favorites' 'My Music', etc. Should there be?

But there is a 'Personal' file or folder listed there, and IT is in the 'Downloads\Documents' folder. I do have a 'Personal' folder in my Documents folder. But I never thought it was in the Downloads area.

This is all pretty puzzling to me. Thanks for any help or answer you can give me.
Sorry about the length.
Mike

Hello Mike, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Under OPTION THREE, you can download and merge the ones for the Downloads (long top # in registry) and Documents (Personal in registry) folders to make sure that they are set to the default location.

Afterwards, save the contents of the Documents folder to another location as a backup, then delete the Documents folder in the Downloads folder and restart the computer. It may take a couple of restarts, but it should restore the folder for you back to default.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks, Shawn, for the quick reply. I didn't expect that.
Happy to have found this site!!

Mike

You're welcome Mike.

By the Way, Shawn, is there any downside to not doing anything at this point, and leaving it as it is?

I ask this because there's 36GB of stuff in that folder and earlier, trying to copy it to an exterior drive, it said it would take 2-3 hours to transfer.

And, also, does this mean I have twice the 36GB of Documents files on my computer because it's in two places?

Mike

It will not hurt anything to wait, but you will just have duplicate folders until it is fixed. Once you have it fixed and everything checks out, you can delete the backups to regain the space back though.

Boy, am I a pest or what! or maybe just dense..

But I think this should be the last query....

When I mentioned about having the 'documents' folder in two places, that I'm looking at right now before doing anything, one a Documents folder under Michael, and one a Documents folder 'inside' the Downloads area (with the same files), are they 'each' currently taking up 36GB of space on my harddrive (for a total of 72GB)?
Or are they actually one and the same folder, taking up 'one' 36GB of space? with one or the other actually being a shortcut or some strange thing that Vista does??

The reason I ask is that earlier this afternoon before I found this site, I was actually trying to transfer (move) the Documents folder inside the Downloads area to my exterior hard drive, and as I checked on the files being moved out of 'that' folder, I checked, and they were 'ALSO' being moved out of the regular Documents folder simultaneously! So I stopped the transfer because I thought the two folders were one and the same and I was actually transferring all my Documents folders to the external drive.

Talk about strange.

Thanks again! in advance, Shawn