Two copies of a Folder in Win 7
 

another Win 7 weirdness...

there are 2 copies of My Documents showing in Windoze 7

also, when I moved files (including a subdir (I mean "folder")) to one of them, they now appear in the other one


what's up with this? I don't like seeing a bunch o' extraneous crap when I'm looking at my folders or file structures, but I'm afraid to delete the 2nd one (as that might kill the 'real' one)

I also did not see any way to hide it when I right clicked on it

Just a guess...

One of them is the real one, the other is a Documents "Library". In Win7, there are virtual folders which can hold the contents of multiple folders from multiple sources as if they were all in one with no visible difference. For example, you can have pictures from all over your hard drive all contained in the "Pictures" Library- which acts like a folder, but with no physical location..


Somehow, you have a Library containing Documents as well as the original My Documents.

How is the new machine working?

It is probably a junction point, basically a link to another folder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point

Run from the root of C:\ this command will list all of them.

dir /AL /S

Some are added for convenience and some are needed for backward compatibility.

thx - will look at the jct. point thing

new machine works ok; will start a new thread

the Wiki claims that under Win 7 "Deleting a junction point using Explorer is now safe."

so, if I don't want to see this duplicated thing, then...

[1] how can I be sure it really IS a junction point??

[2] how do I know which one to delete using Windows Exploder?