Help Rebuilding Windows 7 User Home Folder

[Zarathustra[H]]

Hey all,

I have an odd problem I could use help with.

In my household, in order to make sure to make sure all data is backed up, and since I can't trust the users (teenage boys and a wife) my strategy is to - on each local machine - move all the individual folders to the NAS which is redundant, and I frequently back up.

I do this by going into C:\Users\Username and right clicking on each library (like my documents or my videos, etc.), going to properties and choosing the location tab, and clicking the "move" button and pointing the folder to NAS instead.

Well, my NAS was having some problems the other day and was down. When the computer booted up, and I tried to access my libraries it decided to forget where they are, and instead recreated a local version somewhere (I don't know where). In the user folder, there are only dead symlinks which I can't seem to do anything with.

So I have two questions.

1.) How can I restore the C:\users\username folders to their original state; and

2.) Is there a better way to do this that won't cause this problem to recur?

I appreciate the help,
Matt

 

[heatlesssun]

Not sure what the problem is with the library folders since the NAS was acting up. Can't you just did what you did before and set the location of the libraries to point them back to the NAS since it's online now?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Not sure what the problem is with the library folders since the NAS was acting up. Can't you just did what you did before and set the location of the libraries to point them back to the NAS since it's online now?

I thought that's how it worked, but the folders are gone in the user home folder, and instead windows is using some alternate secret location I can't find where it is.

I tried just creating links where the old libraries were, but that doesn't work. Windows still goes to the alternate secret location.

This peeved me as my games folder is on the NAS as well, and it's preventing me from playing my games (unless I want to setup all my settings and start from scratch)

The NAS has since been fixed and all the locations are still shared where they used to be, it's just that windows somehow grenaded the user home folder when it couldn't find the NAS and I can't figure out how to fix it.

Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Not sure what the problem is with the library folders since the NAS was acting up. Can't you just did what you did before and set the location of the libraries to point them back to the NAS since it's online now?

I thought that's how it worked, but the folders are gone in the user home folder, and instead windows is using some alternate secret location I can't find where it is.

I tried just creating links where the old libraries were, but that doesn't work. Windows still goes to the alternate secret location.

This peeved me as my games folder is on the NAS as well, and it's preventing me from playing my games (unless I want to setup all my settings and start from scratch)

The NAS has since been fixed and all the locations are still shared where they used to be, it's just that windows somehow grenaded the user home folder when it couldn't find the NAS and I can't seem to figure out how to fix it.

Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks,
Matt

 

[SkittlesMcduck]

Folder locations are stored in the registry in this location. You should be able to see the "secret" location that windows is pointing to and restore the locations back to your NAS.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Hope that helps!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Folder locations are stored in the registry in this location. You should be able to see the "secret" location that windows is pointing to and restore the locations back to your NAS.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Hope that helps!

That certainly does! Thank you very much!