My Documents link not functioning correctly

[lon0]

Hi all,

I have a Windows XP Sp3 machine, it was inherited from someone and instead of them creating a new account and deleting their old one they just manually deleted everything they could and changed the name on the account.

This meant that the new user lost the correct paths to their My Documents folder, they have now used this for some time and accumulated a lot of data on their account (under the old user's name).

I have got hold of the PC finally and to try and remedy this without a re-install, I have created a new account, with the idea of moving all the data over to the new account and voila, all the links should be working! However this is not the case, everything is ALMOST right, if I navigate to My Computer and go to the corresponding name then it opens My Documents and all appears well. If I right click on the name of the account, create a shortcut on the desktop then it creates a .ink however when I go to open it, it does nothing and immediately comes up with a broken link icon. In the default start menu there is no link to My Documents, there are both the My Music and My Pictures however (both working correctly).
Also, no My Documents in My Computer under Other Places, Shared Documents link works correctly.


I have tried the following:
1) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / Software / Microsoft / Windows / Current Version /
Explorer / DocFolderPaths
(All correct)
2) Ensured that My Documents is not pointing to a network drive
3) Made sure that it wasn't blocked under group policy
4) I made sure it was an Administrator account

Any ideas welcome,
Thank you!
Laurence

 

[drifter77]

Hi Laurence,

I would try a different approach. Since this machine was inherited from someone, you don't know exactly what that person was doing on his computer. It's always better to forget about the My Documents / My Pictures folders ..etc. Divide your hard drive into two partitions, keeping the OS and programs on one, and the other one use it for your data. That way, if your Windows fails at some point, you'll have all your data on a separate partition. You would lose all your stuff if you have it under Documents on C: drive and Windows busts.

Your other option is to do a clean install and build everything from scratch. A lot of people resist this idea but you'll get a fresh copy where you can tweak all you want.

 

[lon0]

Hi Laurence,

I would try a different approach. Since this machine was inherited from someone, you don't know exactly what that person was doing on his computer. It's always better to forget about the My Documents / My Pictures folders ..etc. Divide your hard drive into two partitions, keeping the OS and programs on one, and the other one use it for your data. That way, if your Windows fails at some point, you'll have all your data on a separate partition. You would lose all your stuff if you have it under Documents on C: drive and Windows busts.

Your other option is to do a clean install and build everything from scratch. A lot of people resist this idea but you'll get a fresh copy where you can tweak all you want.

If you are suggesting just to keep the data across on another partition than that is of course a good idea, however I keep all the data on these PC's all backed up on a smb network. The user which will end up with this piece of kit isn't particularly tech savvy and using My Documents is the only way as keeping continuity is key here.

I appreciate that a clean install would be an option here and I might end up having to do this. However I would like to know what is wrong here and how to remedy this. It is most likely a registry entry somewhere and I was wondering if someone had gone through this before, that way if I come across this again I can fix it quickly and easily and I also won't have to go through the hassle of reinstalling all the apps on this PC (most of which the disks are unavailable).

Thanks though, if you have any insight into the problem I am facing then any help would be appreciated!