Moved My Documents but having trouble

I moved "my documents" from my C partition to my I partition as described in Microsoft Support Document Q310147 but I'm still being challenged.

When I moved "my documents" to the I drive I renamed it Jim Documents and verified all of it's content... every thing is OK. Now I download a program and when I click on save it wants to put the document in "MY Documents" on the C drive. I point to the "Jim Documents" folder and save the file but the next time I download the default is still "My Documents" on my C drive. This time I erase "My Documents" and all the subfolders. Try downloading again and windows had recreated "My Documents" on my C drive. (Now, just to be clear, open explorer and look at the tree I find "My Documents" to be the first item under the desktop.) So then I decided that since I can't permanently delete the file, I'll rename it. I renamed it to "C Drive Documents ". So now when I open the start menu the Documents file is named.... you guessed it.... "C Drive Documents" but if I check properties it is still pointing to I:\Jim Documents.

Soooooooo, the questions I'm trying to resolve:
1. How can I change the default for things such as saving downloaded files to my I:\Jim Documents
2. How do I get rid of "My Documents" on the C drive
3. How can I get the name "Jim Documents" to show up on the start menu without creating the same file on my C drive

I'm beginning to think I should go out and buy partition magic and just make the C drive bigger or give up on using "My Documents" methodology.

Thanks and appreciate your help.....

 

Have you tried TweakUI

It has a tab that lets you change many default folders.

Here is the place to go if you need it
http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakUI.asp

In TweakUI
Go to My Computer tab
Special Folders section
Folders drop down list

 

H.H.G. Thanks for the reply. I checked it out and according to Tweakui "My Documents" is K:\Jim Documents which is what it is supposed to be.

Another bogglement has appeared.... the K:\Jim Documents is being mirrored on "C Drive Documents" so even with moving My documents I'm not saving any space on my C drive.

Maybe I should drop MS a line.... hate to do that because in the last 8 years all I've ever got from them is scripts that don't apply to what ever I write them about.

Still look'n for some help here.

 

Jim - truth be told, I think your idea of using PM and having everything point to the %systemroot% drive is probably a good one.

The following is strictly IMO and I'd be happy to read other views.
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I surely don't know (or want to know ) all the in's and out's of the way NT handles things but I do know that the code that manipulates "documents & settings" is pervasive. It pretty much had to be for any real security on PCs in the workplace that would see multiple users and be able to really keep their settings/preferences seperate and secure.

My PC, for instance, where I did a clean install of XP-Pro around 2 weeks ago, has 14 users so far and will probably be well over 30 within a month or so. Everyone has their own "my documents ", desktop, favorites, and such like so we don't bang into one another.

I set it up with most of the drive as C: (%system%) and enough space in a 2nd partition to hold my pagefile with enough extra room to defrag it. The previous install did have a small system drive and a much larger data partition which was convenient pre-NT5 but just isn't worth the hassle with 5 or 5.1.

Besides that, I think M$ finally got it right and keeping a system drive and a larger data drive doesn't make sense like it used to. Sure, on a file or application server I can see good reasons for maintaining seperate drives for OS & data but not on a workstation.

Also, since NT5/5.1 both protect their system32 area from foreign dlls, I'm not really sure I quite trust programs placed on a drive other than my system drive.

 

Hi Newt, thanks for the input. What your saying makes sense and maybe I've got my thinking oriented toward the old school and should reconsider my hard disk management.

In my arena I'm the only user of the PC.... I can't imagine having 30 users coming and going in my bedroom/computer room
On the other hand it could be very interesting

Seriously though, you are suggesting that maybe it IS appropriate to have large boot disks and combine data with programs. Possibly taking my 80GB HD and making it all one partition? I'm not against doing this although it still seems "wrong" but I can't necessarily come up with specific reasons why it isn't "right ".

Any place you know of that discusses disk management?

Regards...

 

Jim - I imagine if you post a new thread in the General Discussions area you will get a good bit of opinion.

With a single drive, the only thing I can think of is what I already suggested which is to put your pagefile on a different partition (except for the 2Mb that has to stay on C. But you may well get more ideas.

There also may be other boards out there that would do more in-depth discussion but I don't know of any myself. All my other bbs time is on fishing (carp and catfish) boards.

 

hey newt,
im a big carpster,where are these fising forums? i would like to participate in a few chats hit me up ok......
rudy

 

Jim - sorry for the hi-jack.

oreootto1

http://www.carponline.com is a mixed (US and UK mostly with a few SA and others) bbs.

http://anglersnet.co.uk/ is mostly UK but a few of us from this side of the pond.

I can highly recommend both the above boards. There are some others but they can get a bit nasty at times and I don't visit them very much. I help mod both the ones listed here and we keep em pretty friendly.

And I can't tell from your profile where you live but if you are US/Canada, take a look at the Carp Anglers Group web site at http://www.geocities.com/cyprioman/

And feel free to drop me an email to nvail@ctc.net .

 

THANKS ALOT NEWT I JOINED, FINALLY THERE IS A ROOM FOR CARP FISHING,OH BY THE WAY I AM A MEMBER OF THE CARP ANGLERS GROUP......