programs can no longer run

[someothernickname]

New computer with Vista Home Basic. Used the vista tool to migrate
settings from old machine. For a month or so, seems to be working
ok. Noticed the ghost documents and settings folder which appears to
be a copy of what is also in users. So why is it there?

I had an add on to firefox that was storing stuff in local settings
under the firefox area. When I first did it I could go there, via
users, and see it. Something changed, perhaps a windows security
update, and I couldn't see it anymore. I tried taking ownership and
things got even worse. Now when I start firefox I'm informed that it
can't access security area for the browser and it doesn't work. I
restored to an earlier point, but the problem remains.

Also, now quite a few other programs won't work properly -- photoshop
can no longer find some things it wants, open office tells me it has
an internal error, and I get various kinds of errors with other
programs.

Is there anyway to recover from this? Can I get rid of this now
useless documents and settings ghost? What's the point of having a
bunch of folders in my user account I can't access? My old videos,
for example, are all there in a folder called "videos", but there is
also a folder called "my videos" that I can't access.

Are there really two copies of the files in "videos"? There are two
folders by that name, one in documents and settings and one in users.
Both appear to have the 14 some odd gig of video work I've been
working on (but can't now because Nero Vision won't start any more).

help, please.

 

[Kerry Brown]

The folders under Documents and Settings are note really folders but
junctions that point to folders in the Users folder. This is for
compatibility for older programs that hard coded the file locations, a very
lazy programming practice.

http://www.jimmah.com/vista/Security/junctions.aspx

If you have altered the NTFS permissions for the junctions this is probably
the cause of your problems. Unfortunately I don't know of a way to fix these
junctions once they are altered.

 

[someothernickname]

Kerry,

Now that I've learned about "junctions," it does seem to be the source
of the problem. One thing that really puzzles me is why/how I started
seeing the Documents and Settings junction in the first place. For
the first few weeks I never saw it and assumed everything had been
moved to Users, fine by me. It was those irritating My XXX junctions
inside users that was bothering me, and not being able to find things
that used to be under local or application settings. As long as
Docments and settings was hidden, if they'd also hidden those my xxx
junctions, I wouldn't have had the problem in the first place. But I
knew it was there because some of those "poorly" written programs were
showing in save as dialogs a path that included documents and
settings. Since that is a call to a windows service, why was the
junction shown, why wasn't it translated to the real location?

 

[Michael Walraven]

You are seeing these junctions because you elected (on purpose or not) to
view hidden and system items.

When you have an explorer open:
Tools
Folder options
View Tab
Files and Folder/ Hidden files and folders
set to Do not show hidden files and folders

Files and Folders
set Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)

For normal operations these are good settings as they don't show stuff your
are not supposed to be changing. If you are doing system maintenance you may
want to temporarily enable the viewing of these files but I find it best to
disable the viewing after the need has passed.

Michael
Vista Home premium