Windows 7: How to change location of a profile's folders?

Question

Am trying to get Widows 7 to behave when told to change a user's "Desktop", "Saved Searches", "Desktop", "My Music", and the rest of the folders that "point" to their different directories and that can be found on their profile. This is an Spanish Lang Win7 (Home Premium) so the names in the "visible" folders don't correspond with the name on the filesystem.

The user's profile is on c:\Users\Username, but I want them to save documents in D:\Users\username\Documents, the favorites to be in "D:\Users\username\Favorites, etc..

I've manually changed the "location" data in the properties of the folders, and when I did so, I was asked if I wanted to move the content. So far, so good.

I then deleted the "extra" folders in C:\users\username.. but when I reboot, I get a duplicated "links" (I can't think of any other name) in the "userprofile" folder: the ones I moved and "new" ones that are created. I can delete the "new" ones, but it's starting to be somewhat of a PITA... Also, the user this laptop is for will likely be confused by the "appearance" of the folders, and there is at least a 50% chance they'll end up using the wrong destination to save files, etc, which would be a cause of major pain down the road.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Javier

Solution

You can remap these folder via the user's registry: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders] There you will find what you need.

Regards, Christoph

Comments

[sdeland]

Regarding the "new" ones that are created, are they created as "C:\Users\username\Documents" ? Can you confirm that these new ones are empty and aren't just links to the authoritative versions on the D drive? Is it possible the new ones being created aren't being created by another application that doesn't properly honor the moved location?

[bobthearsonist]

Yes, they're created where the old one was placed: if I "moved" the location of "Mis imágenes" ("images") to D:\Users\username\Images and deleted c:\users\username\Images, reboot and then I'd have two "Mis Imágenes" "names" in the Explorer Window. Not only that, but the "localized alias" appears when you open the user folder within Explorer. Looking into the issue a bit more, I "saw" that not all of the folders were being re-created, only some of them, so I went into regedit and did a search for the places where C:\users\username\whatever appeared, and changed for D:\, and it works.

[bobthearsonist]

Interesting article, thanks a lot, but this is not the case. What I'm trying to "tame" is the "standard" folders that can be found "under" the "favorites" part of the left part of an explorer Window, such as "Desktop", "Downloads", "Documents" ("Escritorio", "Descargas", "Documentos" in Spanish) This folders have an underlying filesystem folder where the data is stored direcly. Thanks for the pointer anyhow