Duplicate levels of 'Application Data' folders in Vista?

[Guest]

This may be a stupid question, but it's driving me crazy. If you go into
Folder Options and uncheck the box which says "Hide protected operating
system files", and then go into Windows Explorer and go to the following path:

Users\'username'\AppData\Local\

you will see the 'Application Data' folder along with all the other folders
(e.g. Adobe, Google, Microsoft, etc.). If you click on the 'Application
Data' folder, it opens up and displays the exact same set of folders which
you saw in the 'Local' folder. If you then open up that next level
'Application Data' folder, you see the same list again, and on and on for as
long as I looked.

Are there really nested levels of the same folders, or is this just same
strange apparition that I'm seeing?

I don't see the same behavior with Windows XP. Is this something different
in Vista, or do I have a corrupted Vista application on my new computer?

Thanks,
JoanB

 

[Jon]

This may be a stupid question, but it's driving me crazy. If you go into
Folder Options and uncheck the box which says "Hide protected operating
system files", and then go into Windows Explorer and go to the following
path:

Users\'username'\AppData\Local\

you will see the 'Application Data' folder along with all the other
folders
(e.g. Adobe, Google, Microsoft, etc.). If you click on the 'Application
Data' folder, it opens up and displays the exact same set of folders which
you saw in the 'Local' folder. If you then open up that next level
'Application Data' folder, you see the same list again, and on and on for
as
long as I looked.

Are there really nested levels of the same folders, or is this just same
strange apparition that I'm seeing?

I don't see the same behavior with Windows XP. Is this something
different
in Vista, or do I have a corrupted Vista application on my new computer?

Thanks,
JoanB

It is something different in Vista. It looks like a shortcut, but in reality
it's what's known in the trade as a 'junction'

You can see this if you open up a command prompt and type the following

dir /al %userprofile%\AppData\Local

If you examine the output closely, then you'll see that it's a junction. In
square brackets the target of the junction is shown, which in this case is
its parent folder.

They're essentially there for compatibilty purposes, so that if an
application tries to write to a place that it knew and loved under XP, it
will be redirected to a suitable place in Vista. I forget the exact mapping
for that particular one, but there is a good reason for each.

 

[Guest]

Jon,

Thanks for the info - I was worried that something was wrong with my Vista
installation. It's reassuring to know that it's normal behavior.

JoanB

 

[Guest]

I recently saw the same thing on my system: unending branches of the same
thing coming off the Application Data folders. In addition, my virus scan
was scanning forever and scanning millions of files. My disk space was
getting used up rapidly. I deleted the extra Application Data folders and
everything went back to normal and the duplicates haven't returned. I don't
understand this at all.