Dan Martin

Has anyone figured out how to change the location of the My Documents folder in Vista?

In 2000 and XP, we mapped our user's My Documents folder to their private share on the network. Previously, you could just go into the My Documents properties and choose a new location, but that option doesn't seem to be available in Vista.

Billiam

If you do properties on the actual documents folder within the user's profile directory you will see a "Location" tab with a "move" button. I'm not about to try it though.

A quick search through the registry looks like it might be stored at:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Exp lorer\Personal

Whiskers

Its on my wife's new laptop..Very pretty, but kinda a nightmare for me as far as finding new compatable programs. Also, I think it runs kinda slow (laptop is a duo with 1GB ram).

whynot

I haven't had too many compatibility issues at all
wish PartitionMagic would work with it though...

Dan Martin

Sorry for the slow reply Billiam, but I gave this a shot last week and ran into a couple new problems.

It seems that when you change the location of your Documents folder, Windows doesn't actually change the Documents folder, it just adds the new location as a new folder in your personal folder. The Documents folder remains in place, but with no contents inside. Applications that save to the Documents folder are smart enough to look at the new folder you've pointed to, however it could be pretty confusing to our end users. The way Windows 2000 and XP handled the My Documents folder relocation was much more intuitive.

The second problem is really just an extension of the first:
When I attempt to install a "non-Vista aware" application such as Streets & Trips 2006, it wants to write a few files to the Documents folder. However, since Vista merely redirects any requests for the Documents folder to my networked folder, the S&T installer will bomb because it can't install to a network drive!

Previously in XP or 2000, "My Documents" requests would be sent to the local cache folder first, then windows would synchronize with the networked folder behind the scenes. Now it seems that Vista is telling installers to write directly to the network drive then it will synchronize with the client later. Essentially it seems that Vista is handling the synchronization the complete opposite way that XP/2000 did.

I haven't been able to fix the first issue, but I have a quasi-workaround for the second problem:
Any time I want to install an application, I have to change the Documents location back to my client User folder, and then run the installer. This takes quite a bit of time since most users have thousands of files and several gigs of data stored on their network folder that need to be transfered to their local machines. Once the installation of the application is complete, I have to change the Documents pointer to point back to their mapped drive, which of course causes Windows to move the same data back again.

It's certainly not a good solution, but it will work until we find something better. We're not planning on rolling out Vista and Office 2007 to our 5000 clients until the end of the year, but the handful of test machines that are running it now are a real pain to set up.

ASHtroboy

M$ is going for the cool factor with Vista. Half our computers at the office were recently upgraded to Vista and I can say the graphix looks very nice. I haven't tested it though coz am still using XP (both at home and office). But I'll wait for a year before I upgrade my HP laptop to Vista coz you can expect lots and lots of bugs in the new OS to crop up now that it is released.

goose25

I upgraded my Dell 9300 a few weeks ago and even though the graphics card isn't great and i only have 1.2 Gb or memory Vista runs fine. The only issues that i have experienced are driver issues and annoying security feature. I've yet to try any games on it but my friend has and he says it runs slower than on XP Pro.

Dan Martin

I just installed Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Standard on my home box this weekend. It was probably the easiest installation of an operating system I've ever encountered. I was asked all of 3 questions in the setup, then I walked away for 20 minutes and came back to a fully functional desktop. Very slick.

The only driver I had to download was for my sound card. It actually took longer to download the 20mb driver than it did to install windows from scratch.

Whiskers

Very cool....Is there a way to install the upgrade OS from scratch if you have the license key for XP?

Dan Martin

I was just talking to someone who said that there's a loophole for this. You do a fresh install of Vista with an upgrade disk and choose not to activate it. It will run in trial mode for 30 days, but at any time in those 30 days you can run the Vista install again, and it will let you "upgrade" from your previous installation so you can activate it.

I guess the installer will let you upgrade from XP or another version of Vista, so when it sees another copy of Vista running (even a non-activated version), it lets you complete the upgrade process.

It would be a little bit of a PITA to have to install Vista twice, but it would be a nice loophole for anyone who wants to quasi-leagally purchase Vista at a substantial discount. I should also mention that I haven't tried this trick, so you might want to check around the net to see if anyone else has attempted it before you format your drive.

Whiskers

Will an upgrade key work on a full install though?

Dan Martin

It sounds like you can install a Vista upgrade on a blank hard drive but it will only install as a 30 day trial.

Once you have that on your computer, you can run the Vista upgrade again and then it will let you activate your new license. It needs to see either XP or Vista on the machine before it will let you complete the upgrade.

srika

hahahahahaha... sorry this is funny.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18230178