Kerry,
Now that I've learned about "junctions," it does seem to be the source
of the problem. One thing that really puzzles me is why/how I started
seeing the Documents and Settings junction in the first place. For
the first few weeks I never saw it and assumed everything had been
moved to Users, fine by me. It was those irritating My XXX junctions
inside users that was bothering me, and not being able to find things
that used to be under local or application settings. As long as
Docments and settings was hidden, if they'd also hidden those my xxx
junctions, I wouldn't have had the problem in the first place. But I
knew it was there because some of those "poorly" written programs were
showing in save as dialogs a path that included documents and
settings. Since that is a call to a windows service, why was the
junction shown, why wasn't it translated to the real location?
On Dec 15, 10:26 am, "Kerry Brown" <ke...@kdbNOSPAMsys-tems.c*a*m>
wrote:
> The folders under Documents and Settings are note really folders but
> junctions that point to folders in the Users folder. This is for
> compatibility for older programs that hard coded the file locations, a very
> lazy programming practice.
>
> http://www.jimmah.com/vista/Security/junctions.aspx
>
> If you have altered the NTFS permissions for the junctions this is probably
> the cause of your problems. Unfortunately I don't know of a way to fix these
> junctions once they are altered.
>
> --
> Kerry Brown
> Microsoft MVP - Shell/Userhttp://www.vistahelp.ca/phpBB2/
>
> "someothernickname" <redwoodt...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:4535bcc9-ca53-47aa-897d-...
>
> > New computer with Vista Home Basic. Used the vista tool to migrate
> > settings from old machine. For a month or so, seems to be working
> > ok. Noticed the ghost documents and settings folder which appears to
> > be a copy of what is also in users. So why is it there?
>
> > I had an add on to firefox that was storing stuff in local settings
> > under the firefox area. When I first did it I could go there, via
> > users, and see it. Something changed, perhaps a windows security
> > update, and I couldn't see it anymore. I tried taking ownership and
> > things got even worse. Now when I start firefox I'm informed that it
> > can't access security area for the browser and it doesn't work. I
> > restored to an earlier point, but the problem remains.
>
> > Also, now quite a few other programs won't work properly -- photoshop
> > can no longer find some things it wants, open office tells me it has
> > an internal error, and I get various kinds of errors with other
> > programs.
>
> > Is there anyway to recover from this? Can I get rid of this now
> > useless documents and settings ghost? What's the point of having a
> > bunch of folders in my user account I can't access? My old videos,
> > for example, are all there in a folder called "videos", but there is
> > also a folder called "my videos" that I can't access.
>
> > Are there really two copies of the files in "videos"? There are two
> > folders by that name, one in documents and settings and one in users.
> > Both appear to have the 14 some odd gig of video work I've been
> > working on (but can't now because Nero Vision won't start any more).
>
> > help, please.
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