cant find my documents

my computer can not find the c/documents&settings/user name/my documents folder. i cant access it from the start menu or via explourer. when i click on the + my computer just searches.any ideas please

 

no sorry i just put that so you know what i mean. you are correct the documents are located in settings/user name. but when i try to search the directory and click the plus sign in my documents the computer just searches also when i click on the propeties of the folder it shows how many files and 22 folders, yet i can not open the folder, when i try it just says not responding and re sets my desktop.

 

Lets see where the system thinks your documents should be. Click Start>Run and type cmd then hit enter to open a command window. At the prompt, type set and hit enter. Locate the line labled USERPROFILE= and tell us what the path is.

Right click the My Documents icon on the Start menu and select Properties. What is the path shown in the Target field? And the Target on the Properties of the Windows Explorer My Documents folder?

 

the path on the cmd and the propeties on both explorer and start menu propeties all say the say the same for the path. c/Documents and settings/mum&dad. This is where the documents should be but all i get is not responding and and computer still searches.
I know the documents are there because i used the search pane to locate a file i know is there and moved it to a temp folder on my desktop so i can continue working.

 

It sounds to me that your My Documents folder may have a corrupted file in it. Any chance you remember the last couple of things you saved to that folder before the problem began?

The My Documents by default is home to many other things, such as My Pictures, My Music, My Videos, etc. The corruption, if that's the problem, may well be in any one of those subfolders too. Does your Start menu have an icon for My Music and My Pictures? Do they open properly?

 

hi, I have managed to open the folder and discovered a film i downloaded(or think i did) has arrived frame by frame/picture by picture. i have 161,000 jpeg images to delete and its taking some time, no wonder the computer took so long to open the folder. I wish there was a way to delete the entire contents in one go. So i am now starting to delete the files(i have told computer to delete at once and not via recycle bin) i will return here as soon as its done to let u guys know what happened.
keith

 

If those are the only picture files in the folder, I can give you a command to delete them all in one swoop from a command window. Is the file extension .jpg or .jpeg?

 

they are jpeg and i have 161,000 left to delete

 

It would be best to know the naming convention used for them, so that we don't delete anything that you wouldn't want deleted. What is the name of the first, and the name of the last?

 

its ok i moved all i wanted to keep first. I have just finished deleting the 131,000 files unwanted and now my documents folder (now empty) open all ok. The folders i put aside are back in and all is working well. Thank you all for your help on this matter. the cmd promp to delete all at once though will still be most welcome

thank you all again

 

Good to hear you've gotten things fixed.

Command prompt method

Click Start>Run type cmd and hit enter.
At the command prompt, type cd my documents and hit enter.
Type del /q *.jpg then hit enter.

NOTE: this will delete ALL jpg files in the My Documents folder. It may delete all jpg files in every subfolder of My Documents as well, despite not having the switch telling it to do subfolders.

Lets say the files in question were named flic1.jpg thru flic136000.jpg
To delete the files in that range, the following command would narrow the files targeted.

del /q flic*.jpg

If you had other files you wanted to keep named flic5.jpg, or flicpic.jpg they would get deleted with that command too. The Asterisk in the command is a wildcard, and represents any character and any number of characters. Any jpg files that do not start with flic would be safe though.