Vista - more on hidden files

I have found that some files are hidden, and like to stay hidden. For those
using E-mule, you will find your "incoming" folder won't show in Vista. I
don't know how to show hidden files in Vista, so I just re-routed my
downloads to "downloads" in my documents..

My question is if there is a way to make these files appear, or change the
settings?

Hello,

The problem you are experiencing in this case is two-fold:

1) E-mule is misbehaving
2) Windows is silently working around e-mule misbehaving

Which, in this case, results in a big mess.

The problem is that e-mule creates the incomming folder inside of the
program files folder. Unfortunately, program files is not intended to store
downloads - it is intended for programs ONLY, and Microsoft has told this to
developers over and over again.

The security on program files is set up so that programs cannot write to it
unless they ask you for admin power via a "windows needs your permission to
continue" prompt. Because e-mule (correctly) does not ask for this
permission, things go bad when it (incorrectly) tries to write to the
incomming folder inside of program files.

At this point, e-mule should throw an error saying it doesn't have access to
the incomming folder. And this would make it crystal clear what the problem
is. However, Windows knows that a lot of programs wrongly write inside of
the program files folder, so it does something sneaky.

Windows tells e-mule that everything is working OK, and silently saves all
of your downloads to a different folder. Even though from inside e-mule it
looks like all of your downloads are in the incomming folder, they really
are not. They are buried inside a very, very hidden folder inside of your
user folder.

So, the problem in this case is not that the incomming folder is hidden, but
that Windows has actually saved all the files going into the incomming
folder into a different folder but is tricking e-mule into thinking that
they are inside the incomming folder.

Confused yet?

The best solution, as you have found, is to tell e-mule to save things to a
folder inside of your user folder. Hopefully e-mule will change their
behavior to do this in the next update.

In any case, you may be able to go into the e-mule folder inside program
files and click "Show compatability files" on the toolbar to see the
redirected incomming folder. Otherwise, those files should be located
somewhere in this folder:

C:\users\USERNAME\AppData\local\VirtualStore\

Where username is your username.

--
- JB

Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/

Now I get it.
Well, the way it is set up works now. Other than that, I have found no
compatibility issues with e-mule. Everything saves correctly and works as it
should. In fact, it seems to work better than it did in XP.

"Jimmy Brush" wrote:

> Hello,
>
> The problem you are experiencing in this case is two-fold:
>
> 1) E-mule is misbehaving
> 2) Windows is silently working around e-mule misbehaving
>
> Which, in this case, results in a big mess.
>
> The problem is that e-mule creates the incomming folder inside of the
> program files folder. Unfortunately, program files is not intended to store
> downloads - it is intended for programs ONLY, and Microsoft has told this to
> developers over and over again.
>
> The security on program files is set up so that programs cannot write to it
> unless they ask you for admin power via a "windows needs your permission to
> continue" prompt. Because e-mule (correctly) does not ask for this
> permission, things go bad when it (incorrectly) tries to write to the
> incomming folder inside of program files.
>
> At this point, e-mule should throw an error saying it doesn't have access to
> the incomming folder. And this would make it crystal clear what the problem
> is. However, Windows knows that a lot of programs wrongly write inside of
> the program files folder, so it does something sneaky.
>
> Windows tells e-mule that everything is working OK, and silently saves all
> of your downloads to a different folder. Even though from inside e-mule it
> looks like all of your downloads are in the incomming folder, they really
> are not. They are buried inside a very, very hidden folder inside of your
> user folder.
>
> So, the problem in this case is not that the incomming folder is hidden, but
> that Windows has actually saved all the files going into the incomming
> folder into a different folder but is tricking e-mule into thinking that
> they are inside the incomming folder.
>
> Confused yet?
>
> The best solution, as you have found, is to tell e-mule to save things to a
> folder inside of your user folder. Hopefully e-mule will change their
> behavior to do this in the next update.
>
> In any case, you may be able to go into the e-mule folder inside program
> files and click "Show compatability files" on the toolbar to see the
> redirected incomming folder. Otherwise, those files should be located
> somewhere in this folder:
>
> C:\users\USERNAME\AppData\local\VirtualStore\
>
> Where username is your username.
>
> --
> - JB
>
> Windows Vista Support Faq
> http://www.jimmah.com/vista/
>