Duplicate "My Docs" Folders

[Chuck Humphrey]

I have had a few new computers over the past four years. I have
upgraded from Win2000 to WinXP. I believe I have copied the datafiles
from one computer to the next, but may not have done so properly.

I am now running a Gateway desktop and notice the following anomaly,
or what I think is an anomaly, in the foder and file structure when I
look at it in Win Explorer.

I have a folder titled "Documents and Settings" in which there are
five subfolders for "All Users," "Default User," "Local Service,"
"Network Service" and "Owner."

The "Owner" subfolder has a further subfolder for "My Docments" which
appears to contain all of the data files that I want to use or need.

In the folder tree there is another "My Documents" folder (at the same
level as the "Documents and Settings" folder) which has data files
that include older versions of some of my data and additional filders
that I have purged from the "Owner" version of "My Documents."

Questions: Can I safely delete this older "My Documents" folder and
how do you think it wound up on my hard drive?

Chuck Humphrey

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have a folder titled "Documents and Settings" in which there are
five subfolders for "All Users," "Default User," "Local Service,"
"Network Service" and "Owner."

The "Owner" subfolder has a further subfolder for "My Docments" which
appears to contain all of the data files that I want to use or need.

In the folder tree there is another "My Documents" folder (at the same
level as the "Documents and Settings" folder) which has data files
that include older versions of some of my data and additional filders
that I have purged from the "Owner" version of "My Documents."

Each of these under Documents and Settings\<name> corresponds to an
account, selected by the logon you use, and the 'My Documents' folder
under the name you login with is the one you then see as My Documents.
AllUsers is an account name used for things like StartMenu items held
globally for everyone; Default User is used similarly for items to be
added when new user accounts are set up (as a template) and the two
Services ones are for some system uses.

So you *ought* really to be logging in as an account with your own name:
it sounds as if you are logging in on the Owner account. I would
rather suggest you make an account in User Accounts under your own name,
but it is not essential.

The 'My Documents' you see on the left pane of Explorer, at the top
level, is not a separate folder, but a logical route to get to the 'My
Documents' of the username currently logged in. Looking at it and at
the Documents and Settings\<that name>\My Documents should show the same
set of files, just from a different means of access