Boy, How do I explain this so that you all understand what actually happened since I really don't KNOW WHAT happened. Well, I'll give it my best shot. Let me begin by with a little background. Currently I have a separate HDD that I use for all of my file storage. When I installed Vista Ultimate I changed the location of the Documents Folder to "D:\My Documents" and I chose OK to the prompts that followed about Merging, Moving, or whatever. Now when I open my personal folder, Brian, and click on Documents, either in the Favorite Links or Folders section it opens to all of my files and folders. I also redirected the Pictures Folder to "D:\My Documents\My Pictures" and the Music folder - same thing - "D:\My Documents\My Music", each time accepting the prompts about merging, moving or whatnot. All was well for many months...until last night that is. I suddenly got this urge to redirect the Videos folder to the My Videos folder inside of the Documents folder.
Before I realized what had happened, when I chose the location for the Videos folder, I chose what was now labeled "D:\Documents" thinking that it would just put the Videos folder inside of the Documents folder. Of course the prompts came up and I accepted them willy nilly and by now you all are probably chuckling or perhaps even shedding tears from laughing so hard at me (and rightfully so...). Well, somehow the Videos folder was instantly renamed to Documents and when I click on it I see all of the files and folders that are in the Documents folder. One of the interesting things is that even though I am clicking on the folder that is supposed to be Videos (but is labeled "Documents") the actual Documents folder is highlighted blue. If I rename this folder back to Videos it also changes the name of the Documents folder to Videos. I also tried restoring to original location and a prompt came up telling me that the Videos folder did not exist under Brian and would I like to create one. I thought I had fixed it when I chose Yes, but it just renamed the two Documents folder to Videos as well and created a normal shortcut folder named Videos (With 5 Tabs). Also, the Icon for the Documents folder is the Videos Icon. So I now have 3 Videos folders, with one just being a normal shortcut, but it still points to the "D:\My Documents". I deleted the normal 5 tab Videos folder and that did nothing.
What else...Let's see...Now when I right click on either Documents folder in the folder list they both have 6 Tabs instead of 5 and the location for both of them say "D:\My Documents" and the Label on the General Tab for both of them say "Documents". Also, both of them report the exact same folder size and number of files. When I save a document, I can save it to either folder and it shows up in the My Documents folder on the D:\ Drive and in both Documents folders.
When I click on my personal folder on my desktop I also have two NTUSER.DAT files. They are labled NTUSER.DAT.LOG1 with a file size of 256kb and another one named ntuser.dat.LOG2 with a file size of 0kb. I thought perhaps I could delete the .LOG2 folder but I get an error message that says it is being used by another program.
I am scared to delete either one of the two Documents folders as I think even if I delete the one that I "know" (I really don't KNOW anything anymore) is supposed to be the Videos folder that it will delete all of my files. I tried moving the files to a backup location but of course I got bit by that other nasty Vista bug where you get the endless Calculating how much time is left dialogue box. I have 36GB of Documents.
I also really don't want to blow out my user profile and create another one since all of my programs are or most of them anyway are installed only to my profile.
Can anyone please help. I know I have rambled and hopefully I have provided some solid information. It doesn't really affect me THAT BADLY as I can access my documents and my videos but it sure would be nice to have it back the way it is supposed to be. Oh, by the way, I did try the Shadow Copy function and that didn't help either. It listed all of the previous versions as Documents.
Thanks So Much, I look forward to hearing from you all.
Val UNTIL it blows up I think I can fix it. IF it blows up I didn''''''''t touch it!