About three weeks ago I migrated from XP to Windows 10, putting all my personal folders that were in XP's 'My Documents' into Win10's 'Documents' folder. The eBooks for my legacy eBook reader (MobiPocket) were in the XP folder 'My eBooks', which is now a sub-folder of Win10's 'Documents', and the eBook reader was set to find its files at "C:UsersOwnerDocumentsMy eBooks". Also, in XP I wrote a batch file to backup documents to the USB memory (F:), and I modified it in Win10 as follows:Xcopy "C:UsersOwnerDocuments*.*" "f:JN Daily BackupDocuments" /c /h /s /i /y /q /d:%var2% [date I enter with the keyboard]
Both the eBook reader and my batch file worked fine for about 10 days, and then yesterday both started returning "Path Not Found." When I looked in the File Explorer, 'Documents' was still there with 'My eBooks' as a sub-folder containing my eBooks. But then I noticed that 'Documents' was also a sub-folder of Win10's Downloads folder. I clicked on the DownloadsDocuments folder, and everything seemed identical to the main folder Documents. I tried modifying a folder in one, and then found the modified file in the other. When I changed the path in my batch file and eBook reader to "C:UsersOwnerDownloadsDocuments...", both started working again. As shown in the attached screenshot, there no longer is a Documents folder at C:UsersOwner in the command prompt window, even though it's still there in the File Explorer.
What's going on? Will the path to 'Documents' keep changing?
Hi, you might like to read thru this which bears some similarity.. albeit the poster caused the problem by what he did himself.
Solved Duplicate D: drive - Windows 10 blog
Ignore the initial speculation about junctions.
Thanks. I've now read through the thread you suggested but didn's see any solution to my problem. It bothers me that Windows can start shuffling my personal folders around to places where I and my apps can't find them. I'm wondering whether I should move all my user files out of the Windows 10 system partition into another partition (D:/) on the same drive and then stop using the six Windows-created folders altogether. Maybe that way my folders will stay where I put them and only where I put them. Will I lose any useful Windows funcions if I do that?Hi, you might like to read thru this which bears some similarity.. albeit the poster caused the problem by what he did himself.
Solved Duplicate D: drive - Windows 10 blog
1. the principle of moving user data away from your Windows disk/partition is a very good one.
- independence of Windows crashes
- backups
- defragmentation
- size (e.g. think SSD until we get 8Tb SSDs at a good price..)
2. you won't succeed in moving everything away
3. not sure how Windows copes with that sort of change if
a. you do an in-place upgrade repair install
b. a major build upgrade
You'd expect it should, of course.
4. Those folders are typically filled with folders created by programs I've installed. That makes Doucuments 'Their Documents' and so on.
Personally, I leave them to get on with it.
I create my own folders on another partition.
'My files and folders'
'My Photos'
and so on.. and nothing else interferes with them.
Now, you can, of course, incorporate your own folders into the libraries- or create your own libraries.
The behaviour you've seen seems remarkably similar to the thread I quoted, so I thought perhaps you might try the ideas at the end of it.
I have moved mine and upgraded a few times and it didn't bother it at all. I didn't move AppData though.
