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Disappearing Files

16 years ago

Vista Home Premium. Two user accounts, one set as administrator and the other as a standard user (for a kid). The kid is working on a book report for school. Creates a file and saves it. Logs off.

The next day the file is gone. Nothing in "My Documents." Look at the "My Documents" directory from the Administrator account and while the file is still gone it shows two other files (one a text file and the other a .xps). Then I created another simple text file, from the kid's account, and saved it to "My Documents." Interestingly after I did that the other two files miraculously appeared.

We re-typed the original document, made some changes, saved several different versions. Logged off. Today, again, there's nothing in "My Documents". If I look at the folder from the Administrator account the three versions of the document are still there along with the two other ones.

What the heck is going on?

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Comments (10)

DA_Mccoy
16 years ago
I don't use multiple accounts, but isn't the My Document Folder only accessible by the administrator not all users?

Have you tried logging in as the "standard user" and creating a new folder for storing the document files with it being named and located where you wish? I sure have an inkling this would solve your concern.

DA
mike_kaiser_gw
Original Author
16 years ago
My understanding is that each user account has a "My Documents" folder. Looking at the directory structure:

C:\users\username1\my_documents
C:\users\username2\my_documents
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zep516
16 years ago
I don't use 2 accounts either. I wonder if you can experiment and turn off user account control (UAC) in vista. Don't know how to do it so Google Turn off UAC in vista.See what happens....
DA_Mccoy
16 years ago
Make sure when the target document is saved it is being saved into the proper user folder. All of us have at least once inadvertently pointed saved files into the wrong folder.

The answer to turning off UAC is in the Help.

DA
exgm
16 years ago
Unless configured otherwise Vista accounts should by default save to their respective profile default file locations. Shall I assume MS Word is the app in question? If so the default should be My Documents. What does the Word MRU show if you go to File->Open? Was a memory key in use at the time? Finally if you know the filename or type of document, do a search for it. Having said that, I am not a fan of Vista's default search by comaparion to previous Windows versions. For Vista and 7 I use Nirsoft's SearchMyFiles.

Located here

You would enter your search criteria in the "Files Wildcard" field.
mike_kaiser_gw
Original Author
16 years ago
Not a Word document but rather WordPad saving as a .rtf file. Does save to "My Documents". Nothing shows up in the "recent" file menu of WordPad.

This is interesting, just tried to log onto the kids account and Windows is giving me the message "preparing your desktop". Once the desktop loaded I get a message about your profile not loading properly. Something is amiss here.

I'd think that something is corrupt in the registry but not sure at this point
exgm
16 years ago
Have a restore point?
zep516
16 years ago
"preparing your desktop"

Sounds like it's not saving settings too. You know how you log off and windows says saving your settings?????

System restore sounds good to me too!
mikie_gw
16 years ago
My Documents is a junction shortcut that simply redirects items placed into it by old programs ... into the user/name/Documents folder.

Vista doesnt use the 'My Documents' folder like the previous versions,,, now its simply 'Documents'.
If you use the folder option 'Hide protected opperating system files', you'll not see that junction in your normal places. Its simply junction point used for program backwards compatability.

Is my understanding anyhow.
exgm
16 years ago
Technically, yes.

MS Link

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