Hi Experts,
I'm trying to help get my daughter's laptop back to where it should be. I have no idea how she did this, but using Vista Home Premium (SP2), she has somehow got multiple Document Folders created and I can't use the "Start | Documents | Properties | Location | Move" facility to make this happen. When I use the "Select a Destination" dialog, it defaults, in the upper "root" box next to the Search box, to a folder called "Desktop", but I can see under that, in the "Tree" view below and thus navigate to, her folder ("Karla\Documents") which exists, I see a message saying "No items match your search" where the files would normally be, but click on the "Select Folder" button anyway, it just returns to the original "C:\Users\Owner\Applicatio
n Data" Location where the Documents folder apparently resides, that was there when I started this process. If I then override this supposed "Location" with "C:\Users\Karla\Documents"
by typing it in instead of Browsing to it (or if I click the "Find Target" button with that override selected), I get an "Error Finding Folder - "The folder "C:\Users\Karla\Documents"
does not exist."
If instead of accepting that default "root folder" of "Desktop, I click the "Previous Locations" drop down box next to that, and choose: "C:\Users", the Tree below opens to that location, but "Karla" is not listed as a User (even though she IS under the "Control Panel | Users". Instead what I see is this folder called "Owner" and no other dedicated User folders are there (perhaps, interestingly (though after working on this all day, I am well beyond being interested in anything but fixing this mess), in the the "Control Panel | Users", there is no "Owner" listed there.
If it makes any difference, when I click on the "Start | Documents icon", it takes me to an Explorer view that is labeled "Karla > Documents" which has only the "desktop.ini: file in it and which, if I click into the Address Bar, the "Karla > Documents" ... resolves into "C:\Users\Owner\Applicatio
n Data\Documents".
Also, there is a "Start | Karla" menu item, and clicking that takes me to where SOME of her apparent information resides though her "Karla | Documents" folder is empty (I actually started this process by trying to just move some of the files together from the different "orphaned" Documents" folders and then deleting the empty folders as I went but am not done with that entirely yet as the apparently orphaned "C:\Documents\Documents" folder is where I found most of the other stuff and I haven't deleted the "originals" there yet until I find out what is going on here). But if I right-click on that menu item or, from Explorer view, on the Folder itself, there is strangely no "Properties" item to select.
Also, the "Karla" folder has some little green folder icon with a little white, blue bordered square in the middle, instead of the yellow file folder icon I see on most other folders.
Somewhere along this tortuous path, I read a forum post that had me check the Registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
\Microsoft
\Windows\C
urrentVers
ion\Explor
er\User Shell Folders
... where I found all of the entries pointing to the %USERPROFILE% root, but no entry for the "Documents" folder ... which I think is probably important ... (?)
Also, the source of confusion for me is another duplicate Documents folder found at "Users\Owner\AppData\Roami
ng\Documen
ts" ... that I'm a little puzzled by ... this is my daughter's single-user laptop ... she doesn't interact with any servers or networks other than a wireless internet connection off a DLink router ... so why is there even a Roaming profile (or whatever it is) there?
Lastly, I do see on the "Start | Documents | Properties | Location" tab, next to the "Move" button, a button that says "Restore Default" ... which sounds like what I want to do ... but at this point, I'm a little afraid to do anything for fear of messing things up worse.
Ok, lots of questions here but I'm hoping there's a common thread to most of them and someone has passed this way and can help me sort it out.
Thanks for any insights!
Jeff