Summary: Two previously standard folders, "Documents and Settings" and "Local Settings", appear to be locked in Windows Vista. The reason: they've been moved.
I can not longer access the Documents and Settings folder or the Local Settings folder after my XP to Vista upgrade. I appear not have sufficient privileges yet I am the administrator (full access) or my local PC?
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As best I can figure Microsoft is trying to make it very difficult to access those old folders.
Yes, I said "old folders". Apparently in Windows Vista, the folders have been moved. The information is elsewhere and fully accessible in the new location.
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If you try to open "C:\Documents and Settings" in Windows Explorer on Vista, you're quite likely to get this error:
Even if you're logged in as administrator you may still get that error.
The "problem" here is that Microsoft has apparently moved everything that used to be in "Documents and Settings" into a new folder called "Users". Open that and you'll probably get what you were expecting out of "Documents and Settings":
In fact you may notice that "Documents and Settings" is displayed with a shortcut icon in Windows Explorer:
As you can guess, "Documents and Settings" is a shortcut to "Users", presumably present for compatibility reasons.
You can probably also guess what's happened with "Local Settings". Normally you'd find it in "c:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings". It's been moved to "c:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local":
I don't know the specific reasons for the changes. One observation is that the "new" paths have no spaces in them, making me wonder if the old names were particularly problematic when configuring software to use these locations. That doesn't seem like enough of a reason, though, for a change of this magnitude.
In any case, if you get access denied at the old location, the solution is simple: go to the new location instead.
Related:
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Ask Leo! - Where is Windows Explorer?
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Ask Leo! - Why does Windows Explorer take so long to display sometimes?
Article C3093 - July 21, 2007
Leo and others...
I have known about the shortcut and hidden juntions but my question is, if I erase them will Vista still work ok?
Any ideas?
Posted by: Justin at November 27, 2007 11:59 PMI found that the change in location, by Vista, can affect Movie Maker. It can return a "General access denied error". When this happens the registry has to be edited to change the location of the temporary files from C:\Users\Local Settings\Temp folder to one that is accessible. I created C:\Users\Temp as the folder. There may be other programs that have the same problem. I have not come across them. What is strange is that Movie Maker comes installed with the OS.
Posted by: David Grainger at January 13, 2008 4:15 PMHi all
Posted by: suyanto at July 18, 2008 8:31 AMI'm new with Vista. I'm trying to open the 'History' folder and also the 'temporary internet folder',however I was unable to open the folder. I tried many times by using 'properties' changing the share options but it didn't work. Any idea how to open thay both folder?
thank you.
If you have show all files selected in vista it will show you old files like my documents that won't open. Uncheck show all files and the problem goes away.
Posted by: Ken at January 26, 2009 2:23 PMThank god you posted this. My outlook.pst file went currupt and for the life of me I couldn't find it. I found it under my user/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Outlook Why did they move everything?
Posted by: Myles at June 28, 2009 1:29 PMI am unable to locate the AppData folder on my C drive. Where would the old "Local Settings" folder go?
I was making an Outlook archive and wrote down the default location where the archive file was to be saved at, which was "Documents and Settings" -> (my account name) -> Local Settings -> Application Data -> Microsoft -> Outlook -> archive.pst
Once te archive process was done, my C drive free space was down by a little more than 3GB (yes, I had a lot of stuff accumulated in Outlook). Then I went looking for that archive file, only to found that there is no "Local Settings" folder under my account name. Then I used the search looking for any folder with names having "Application" or "App" or "Data" but with no results from the WE search; I then did use WE to search for any file with "archive" in the file name; still no results.
Where would the archive file go that took 3GB out of my 40GB C drive?
Posted by: Xinghao Chen at July 4, 2009 8:59 AMSorry, I forgot to mention that my computer has the Windows XP Pro with the latest updates, SP3 and beyond.
Posted by: Xinghao Chen at July 4, 2009 9:02 AMI have windows vista and subscribe to msn/hotmail, up until today I have had no problems opening attachments, why do I now have to download a document before I can open it?
Posted by: Stephen C at July 24, 2009 12:32 PMp.s. when I do try to open it I get the message "failed to execute"
thanks
I was able to access Documents and Settings and a number of other directories until I uninstalled Norton 360 from my Windohs Vista SP2 machine. After this, the link icon appeared on certain folders. Norton has some kind of service for backing up your system files and all, and are persistent that you use this service to the point of being obnoxious, and are more than happy to sell you more storage space if you can't back up your data because of space limitations. I am buying a Mac laptop this coming week primarily because of the poor quality of the Vista OS. I work 10 hours a day as a software developer and tester, and don't enjoy testing Microsofts beta software. Also, I find the "service" of backing my data up an invasion of privacy on the part of Norton and others. The explanations are always sugar coated and with only you're best interest in mind. What's the deal with only one week between Vista SP1 > SP2 releases? Sorry for the vitriol towards Microsoft, but when I spend 2 months of my time working out one Vista bug after another with my Bangalore buddies, and loosing hours of work (yes I back up) I kind of loose interest in even turning the machine at all...
Posted by: Will at September 7, 2009 12:41 AMAlong these same lines, I have a user who's laptop (an HP) is totally dead. They have replaced it and asked me to retrieve their data. I have removed the drive and have it in a USB connected drive case. I can read some of the folders in Users, but many are still inaccessible - This folder may have been moved or be offline.... -
Posted by: mantolik at November 11, 2009 7:39 AMI am using an XP Pro machine to do this....all she is interested in retrieving are the docs, pics and music....