User's folder structure in wrong place?

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I have a new version of Windows 7 (on a new laptop), and the folder structure may be screwed up. My login name is “Dale”, but as you can see from the attached screenshot, Dale’s folder structure doesn’t appear under “Users”. It does appear under “Desktop”, but not under “Users”. Is this of concern?

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On the same page you show.Click on computer then right click on your c drive then click on Properties.Now @ the top in the blank you can type in your name or what ever you want to name the c drive on your system.

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Dale, a “dumb question”. Do you have windows explorer setup to show hidden files and folders?

Look under Folder and Search options in the Organize dropdown, then look on the View tab under Files and Folders, there should be a “Hidden files and folders” item with a radio button underneath.

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Dale,

When you expand the Dale folder under Homegroup, what does that look like? Are you able to access you folders in Dale?

There does appear to be something amiss I do have a folder named Ted in the Users folder. Check what Steve mentions. I do not think this will be what you are looking for because I do not believe the Users is considered a system folder that must be hidden, but I am not sure. Be advised that when you show all hidden system folder you will also see what appear to be folders with a shortcut arrow. These are not folders per say by are called junction points. Just Google search junction points in Win 7 for detailed explanations of what these inaccessible things are.

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Dale,

The folder you see under “Desktop” named “Dale” is being displayed with your full name from the local user account. Under users the folder name “Temp” is account name for your account.

I’m pretty sure that if you go to Control Panel | User Accounts | User Accounts and click on “Manage User Accounts” you’ll see the user name is “Temp”. If you select “Temp” then click on Properties you’ll most likely see your name (Dale) in the “Full Name” field.

Joe

--Joe

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Dale,

The folder you see under “Desktop” named “Dale” is being displayed with your full name from the local user account. Under users the folder name “Temp” is account name for your account.

I’m pretty sure that if you go to Control Panel | User Accounts | User Accounts and click on “Manage User Accounts” you’ll see the user name is “Temp”. If you select “Temp” then click on Properties you’ll most likely see your name (Dale) in the “Full Name” field.

Joe

I can’t see the exact links you specify. But if I go to “Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsUser AccountsManage Accounts”, two accounts are listed, being “Dale” (an administrator) and “Guest” (which is “off”).

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STEVE: “Show hidden files, folders, or drives” was off. If I turn if on, I can now see an additional folder under “Users” called “Default”, and a shortcut to “Dale”. “Default” has a number of empty folders under it (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc). I can’t remember whether I created the shortcut.

TED: Expanding “Dale” reveals all my files and folders. Nothing’s missing; it’s just that the “Dale” folder is in the wrong place.

I wonder if I just accidentally dragged “Dale” to a new position, without realising it? In which case, maybe I could just drag it back? Or do nothing?

Okay, I’m confused.

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Dale,

Each user should be showing under the C:Users folder. As Joe said, the folder named “Dale” that you see displayed under Desktop contains information from your local user account. It is normal for that to be there.

Did Windows warn you it was creating a temporary user profile named “Temp” when you last booted into Windows? When this happens, it means Windows was unable to access your user profile when you logged on. Go back to User Accounts in Control Panel and click on Configure Advanced User Profile Properties to view all User Profiles on your computer. Do you see a user profile associated with your name?

Try doing a System Restore to a point before this problem occurred. If that does not correct things, you may have to create yourself a new user account. If you make changes to the Temp user account, then those changes will be discarded when you reboot Windows.

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Thanks, Gerald. But this is hurting my head quite a bit. If I understand you correctly, Dale should appear in two places: directly under Desktop and also repeated under DesktopComputerCUsers. And my files should appear under both? (Presumably DesktopDale is just a “view”, repeating what’s in DesktopComputerCUsersDale.) Okay, I think I understand that. But if DesktopDale is just a view of DesktopComputerCUsersDale, where is DesktopComputerCUsersDale? Maybe that’s a silly question.

As to the DesktopComputerCUsersTEMP, no I didn’t get warned about it being created. Didn’t even know it was there until I took the screenshot. By the way, when I go into “Configure Advanced User Profile Properties”, I see this:

Doing a system restore scares me a bit, as I’ve never done that before. Presumably I have to back my files up first. Maybe I should instead try your suggestion of creating a new user account. But how do I transfer my files to the new user?

Sorry for all the questions, but there seems to be great potential for screwing this up right royally. And I must say I’m confused as to how it happened. Brand new Dell laptop with preloaded software. Grrr.

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More information follows.

Logged on as Dale, I create a new user called Dale2 (with administrator rights). This picture shows what Dale2 sees:

I then logged off and logged back in as Dale, and this is what he sees:

I note the following:

[*]Dale2 can’t see DesktopDale
[*]Dale2 doesn’t have a folder called DesktopDale2
[*]On the other hand, Dale can see DesktopComputerCUsersDale2

So, does this confirm the thought that I’ve just inadvertently dragged Dale to the wrong place? Maybe I can fix the problem by dragging Dale under Users? Or is that too risky?

Althernatively, could I fix the problem by migrating to Dale2, like this:

[*]Logged on as Dale, copy all Dale’s files into UsersPublic
[*]Then, logged in as Dale2, copy all Dale’s files from UsersPublic to UsersDale2
[*]Then delete the user Dale.

One things for sure, I don’t know what I’m doing here!

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Dale,

Your graphic in post 9 shows “Dale” as an active profile whose size is 42.8GB. And you are able to log in and out as “Dale” without any error messages. So your original user “Dale” is intact, but not visible under Users.

Log in as “Dale”, and go to C:Users, right click on the user TEMP and select properties to see if there is reference to “Dale” in the full name field. Also when you right click on TEMP and select Properties, what GB size does it show for user TEMP? If it is 42.8GB, then user TEMP is not a temporary user account, but is in fact user account “Dale”.

A Temp user account created by Windows is based on the “Default” user profile and only has default settings, and would be very small as shown in your graphic in post 9 for the Default user profile. It is created by Windows to enable you to get into Windows when your normal user profile cannot be found by Windows or is too damaged to log on. Check out the TEMP user account to see if it contains folders and settings that are in fact your “Dale” account.

I would not do any dragging or copying of user folders or files.

I hope this makes some sense. It is almost 3:24AM here and I better to to sleep now.

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Your graphic in post 9 shows “Dale” as an active profile whose size is 42.8GB. And you are able to log in and out as “Dale” without any error messages. So your original user “Dale” is intact, but not visible under Users.

Which raises the question, I guess, is there in fact a “problem”. Maybe leaving as-is is an option.

Log in as “Dale”, and go to C:Users, right click on the user TEMP and select properties to see if there is reference to “Dale” in the full name field. Also when you right click on TEMP and select Properties, what GB size does it show for user TEMP? If it is 42.8GB, then user TEMP is not a temporary user account, but is in fact user account “Dale”.

There are no references to Dale, except that Dale is listed as an option to share with, and is listed in the Security tab as follows:

A Temp user account created by Windows is based on the “Default” user profile and only has default settings, and would be very small as shown in your graphic in post 9 for the Default user profile. It is created by Windows to enable you to get into Windows when your normal user profile cannot be found by Windows or is too damaged to log on. Check out the TEMP user account to see if it contains folders and settings that are in fact your “Dale” account.

There’s nothing in any of TEMP’s folders (not even hidden files).

I would not do any dragging or copying of user folders or files.

Thanks for the advice.

I hope this makes some sense. It is almost 3:24AM here and I better to to sleep now.

It surely does make sense, and is much appreciated.

WHAT NEXT
Maybe the answer is to do nothing and just monitor the situation? I guess that involves checking on TEMP occasionally to make sure there are no files in there, and watching out for any error messages.

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If there are none of your files in the TEMP user profile folder, then it could not be your user profile renamed. And since you still do not see your User profile “Dale” under C:Users, then something is amiss.

Your “Dale” user profile obviously still exists and you can access your files, but something is not right, and Windows will still maintain that TEMP user profile in your Users folder until things are remedied. Because of that it is probably best:

To create yourself a new administrator user account.
Then log in as the new user.
Next, remove your old user “Dale” and be sure to select keep files.
Finally, take ownership of your old user files. This blog will guide you through the take ownership of your old user files.

By the way, you said in your first post that you have a new version of Windows 7 on a new laptop. Does that mean you upgraded the Windows 7 to another edition of Windows 7 on your new laptop? If so, something about the upgrade may have caused your User profile to disappear from the C:Users folder.

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If there are none of your files in the TEMP user profile folder, then it could not be your user profile renamed. And since you still do not see your User profile “Dale” under C:Users, then something is amiss.

Your “Dale” user profile obviously still exists and you can access your files, but something is not right, and Windows will still maintain that TEMP user profile in your Users folder until things are remedied. Because of that it is probably best:

To create yourself a new administrator user account.
Then log in as the new user.
Next, remove your old user “Dale” and be sure to select keep files.
Finally, take ownership of your old user files. This blog will guide you through the take ownership of your old user files.

By the way, you said in your first post that you have a new version of Windows 7 on a new laptop. Does that mean you upgraded the Windows 7 to another edition of Windows 7 on your new laptop? If so, something about the upgrade may have caused your User profile to disappear from the C:Users folder.

Just checked out this thread – my wife’s computer is in exactly the same situation as Dale’s. She can log in (actually, no login) and the system (Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit, upgrade from Vista) seems to know it’s her. However, she is not listed under Users. Checking out the control panel, she is listed there as an administrator. My computer has a clean install of Win7 Bus. Prof 64 and I am listed under Users. (For me, Win7 has forgotten the printers, but that’s another thread.)

Ron

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If there are none of your files in the TEMP user profile folder, then it could not be your user profile renamed. And since you still do not see your User profile “Dale” under C:Users, then something is amiss.

Your “Dale” user profile obviously still exists and you can access your files, but something is not right, and Windows will still maintain that TEMP user profile in your Users folder until things are remedied. Because of that it is probably best:

To create yourself a new administrator user account.
Then log in as the new user.
Next, remove your old user “Dale” and be sure to select keep files.
Finally, take ownership of your old user files. This blog will guide you through the take ownership of your old user files.

Right, I’ll have a go at it. I’ll do a backup first, in case something goes wrong. But, before I start, is there some way of exporting all my Windows customisations from Dale to Dale2? I thought there was, but can’t find it.

By the way, you said in your first post that you have a new version of Windows 7 on a new laptop. Does that mean you upgraded the Windows 7 to another edition of Windows 7 on your new laptop? If so, something about the upgrade may have caused your User profile to disappear from the C:Users folder.

No, no upgrade involved. Brand new Dell laptop with Windows 7 pre-installed.

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Right, I’ll have a go at it. I’ll do a backup first, in case something goes wrong. But, before I start, is there some way of exporting all my Windows customisations from Dale to Dale2? I thought there was, but can’t find it.

I would just create the new administrator user and then delete the “Dale” profile, but be sure to select Keep Files. That way you can preserve your user files and settings, but you will have to take ownership of those files to access them per the steps and link I posted earlier.

Hope things go well for you!

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Dale,

After reading all these posts, I would think that a complete reinstall of Win 7 may be a better, and quicker way to solve your problem. Since this is a new install on a new PC I have to believe there is not a great deal of stuff to reinstall afterward. I would backup and data (Favorites, contacts actual data, etc) onto a removable media (flash drive comes to mind) then do a complete reinstall including a format of the C drive. Since this is new you must either have a manufacturers branded installation disk, or a recovery partition to accomplish this. This will allow you to set this up the way you want and name the computer as you wish.

Once you have accomplished this, it will give you the opportunity to get rid of all the stuff the manufacturer saw fit to include. I would use PC Decrapifier(that’s really the name) to get rid of most, then use Revo Uninstallerto uninstall the rest of the junk you do not need, then use CCleanerto clean everything up, then use Auslogics Disk Defragmenterto defragment the HD, then make an Image of the clean and agile OS set up the way you want it. I do this on all my new PC’s. For recommendations on Imaging software check the many threads in Security and Backups. mercyh and I have actually added tutorials for 2 of the more well thought of Imaging apps.

This is your PC, and it should be set up the way you want it, not the way the manufacture wants it and obviously screwed up while setting it up the way they wanted it. Good luck!!!

Ted

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Okay, this is getting messy:

[*]Backed up Dale’s files (fortunately!).
[*]Created and logged in under a new administrator user account (Dale2).
[*]Deleted the old user (Dale), using the Keep Files button.
[*]Did the first part of This blog will guide you (“How to take ownership in Windows 7”).
[*]When I came to the second part (“How to grant permissions in Wndows 7”), there seemed to be nothing to do (Dale2 already had the required permissions), presumably because Dale2 is an administrator.
[*]Most of Dale’s files were in a folder called Dale on the Dale2’s desktop. Desktop, Favorites, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos are there, but not My Documents. Not even an empty folder.
[*]Simple, I said, just restore My Documents from my newly-made backup. Did this, electing to maintain folders.
[*]But, although the restore took a long time, the files don’t appear to be there, as shown in the picture below.

Well, I guess the good news is that this seems to confirm that something was wrong! The bad news is that I’m not clear how to get operational again. Maybe it’s time to adopt Ted Myers’ suggestion of completely reinstalling. A pretty major task, since I’ll have to restore all my backups (hopefully successfully) and reinstall programs and recustomise everything.

I’d much prefer to avoid this, but maybe it’s the best option now?

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Well, I guess the good news is that this seems to confirm that something was wrong! The bad news is that I’m not clear how to get operational again. Maybe it’s time to adopt Ted Myers’ suggestion of completely reinstalling. A pretty major task, since I’ll have to restore all my backups (hopefully successfully) and reinstall programs and recustomise everything.

I’d much prefer to avoid this, but maybe it’s the best option now?

I sometimes find that the option that seems that it will be th most involved is often the simplest in the end. After all, look at the time you have spent on the problem until now. A reinstall, even with reinstalling apps and cleaning things up, etc, can be accomplished in a few hours. Your problem does look as though something went horribly wrong during the original instll.

I would even go so far (assuming all data is already backed up) to format the hard drive before the new installation in case some nasty got in and caused the problems. I would then created a second partition. In my system my primary (C Drive) partition is 75 GB and the rest of the HD is a data partition. I would then move all data folders, etc to the new partition. This will allow you to isolate your data from OS problems. Remember this, “Imaging is your friend”!!!

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So you had your Documents before, but they have been lost after deleting the “Dale” user profile, and even the backup you did before the deletion of “Dale” failed to produce your My Documents folder and your user files that were contained in that folder?

In that case, I would go with a reinstall and test it to be sure it is functioning properly, make an image backup, and then go on from there. After getting everything set up the way you want it, do another image backup so you are ready to restore your system completely whenever you need to do so again. The tutorials Ted referenced are excellent, and will be a great help to you.

Sorry it did not work out. Reinstalling Windows is sometimes necessary to fix things. An image backup should spare you of having to go through another reinstallation.

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Earlier this year I mapped out the User Profile folders for Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 in the attached Word document, snappily titled

It may be of interest?

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Having reviewed the situation, I realise that my problem has now changed. The question now is, how do I restore my backed up files? That good old phrase mission-critical comes to mind!

This summarises the backup situation:

[*]I have a folder on Dale2’s desktop called Dale, containing folders called Desktop, Favorites, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos. They contain folders and files that I can see and access.
[*]I have a backup on an external hard drive (created by Windows 7’s “Backup and restore”) contain all of the above PLUS MyDocuments.
[*]I’ve tried various ways of getting the contents of the Dale folder (the one on Dale2’s desktop) into the correct places, without success. However, my latest effort seems to have worked. As an example, to get my photos into Dale2’s MyPictures folder, I clicked the Dale folder, clicked the My Pictures subfolder, selected all sub-subfolders, copied, and pasted into Windows Explorer (in c:UsersDale2My Pictures). This was successful and I can now view and access the files via both c:UsersDale2My Pictures and LibrariesPictures.
[*]However, I have not been able to find a way of restoring the My Documents folder from the external hard drive. For example, I tried the following:

[*]Click on the external drive in Windows Explorer. A list of backups appears on the right.
[*]Click on the relevant backup. A dialog appears and I choose “Restore files for all users of this computer”. The “Restore files (Advanced)” dialog appears.
[*]Click “Browse for folders”. A screen called “Browse the backup for folders or drives” appears, as follows:

[*]I click “Backup of C” on the right. “Users” appears in its place. I click Users and a list of users appears in its place (Dale, Dale2, Public, Temp). I click Dale (which, interestingly, is a more faded colour, maybe it’s “hidden”) and my folders/files appear in its place. Everything’s there, including the Documents folder and its files.
[*]I select the Documents folder (which is also “faded”) and click the “Add folder” button.
[*]I continue through the wizard, choosing to specify a location of c:UsersDale2My Documents (original location doesn’t work either) and “Restore the folders to their original subfolders” (unticking this doesn’t work either).

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So, I’m now in the situation where I can restore my photos and music and videos, but not my documents. I’ve realised that doing a total reinstall may not be too clever at this stage, as that may result in me losing my photos/music/videos as well as my documents!

What next? I believe that the situation is recoverable — after all, I can see all my documents on the external drive. Maybe I’m just not handling the restore correctly. Or maybe I need different restore software (after all, the backed up files are just zip files (I think)).

Any advice for a lost soul?

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GOOD NEWS: I’ve worked out where My Documents went to! When logged in as Dale, I had “Show hidden files, folders, or drives” on, but when I created Dale2, Mr Gates switched the setting back to off. So, the folder structure was there ever since Dale was deleted, but hidden. Phew. Now, I must confess to feeling slightly embarrassed about this, but I can handle that. Having the files back is quite sufficient compensation!

What I’ve now done is turn off the hidden attribute for the My Documents folders/files structure, then copy and paste it all into c:UsersDale2My Documents. This seemed more straightforward than trying to take ownership of the files (which didn’t work last time).

What next? I’ll decide in a day or two (I need a rest from this). But, in the meantime, thanks for all the help and advice (particularly Gerald and Ted).

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I have a new version of Windows 7 (on a new laptop), and the folder structure may be screwed up. My login name is “Dale”, but as you can see from the attached screenshot, Dale’s folder structure doesn’t appear under “Users”. It does appear under “Desktop”, but not under “Users”. Is this of concern?

pc name and login names are different. dale is your user account? who is ted? 🙂

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