Xp and Vista Dual boot and share my documents folder?

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mattarse

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 10, 2006
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I'm trying out vista on my XP machine, and am trying to find out how to use th My Documents folder for both OS's. When I try to change the Vista Documents to point to where the XP My doc's is located, it tries to over write the desktop.ini file.

Anyone know a way around this? My solution so far is to create a shortcut in the Vista My Docs linking to the XP, just adds a click.

Cheers.
 
mattarse said:
My solution so far is to create a shortcut in the Vista My Docs linking to the XP, just adds a click.
Click to expand...

That's what I did. I just removed the My Documents in Vista and created one linking to the XP folder. Didn't add a click for me...
 
create a subfolder under my documents in both os's and put all of your files and other my documents stuff in there then install microsoft synctoy and sync all of the changes to those folders. remember to install a copy for both os's and it should work

i did the same thing to allow my itunes library to be accessed and used on both of my os's
 
l3ender - what I mean is that I open the Doc's folder in vista and have a shortcut to the My Doc's folder.

I've just installed vista last night - so can I add folders to the start menu where the doc's button is?

My wife uses the computer as well, and all she said is "Why do we need to change?" so I've got to ummmm keep it simple before we can switch over completely - but since work gave me a discount - I'm going to start with it and see if I can go ahead and change.

About the synctoy idea - unfortunately I would run very low on disc space quickly if I keep a duplicate of that directory and I'm not going to buy an extra hd for this, would negate the savings on the OS!
 
The easiest way is to have a second drive or partition, and use that for any type of data storage. I would hope members of this board are advanced enough to not use the "My Crap" folders anymore, and store everything in a clean, defined, data area, away from the system partition.

Simply make a Documents folder on the data drive/partition and store everything there. Then, should the OS (either) become corrupted, your personal data is safe.
 
You can do this with MS Powertools, you can reassign the My Documents directory to point to another physical directory on any drive. I used to do it all the time when I kept all of my documents and settings on a second hard drive.
 
mattarse said:
I've just installed vista last night - so can I add folders to the start menu where the doc's button is?
Click to expand...

Hmm, I'm guessing you're using the Vista start menu interface.

Personally, I switched it to the classic menu, and then it was the same thing I did in XP. Just make a shortcut and drag it to the start menu.

I'm sure there's a registry tweak or something to edit the original Docs button in the Vista menu. I can't check this stuff this as my Vista box is down right now, but isn't there a way to change the file path for documents like that? Not sure....sorry :(


Edit: What Blue Falcon says is what I was getting at :) GJ
 
Ok to clear things up a little

I have 2 drives (we'll say A and B)drive A has 2 partitions, one for XP and one for Vista. All data is stored on drive B under My documents

I originally changed the My Doc's folder in XP to point at drive B. Now I have installed Vista as a dual boot.

When i right click on the Documents folder in Vista and then change it to point at the My Doc's folder on Drive B it says something along the lines (at work now so can't check the exact message) that it needs to overwrite the desktop.ini file. Both OS's apparantly use the same file.

From what I've found all this file does is tell explorer how to display the folder contents, but Im not sure if it is a good thing to share with 2 operating systems, and thus have both OS's making changes to the file. I should compare th contents, for all I know they are actually the same between the 2.

I'll try adding the short cut to the start menu, hadn't thought of that, was doing it a little backward, and I think this will solve the problem as long as the Doc's folder can be in the same area of the menu, and not having to be in the program listing.

I was also trying to figure out why they changed the start menu, so was keeping the new for a little while. All I can say is that it is irritating, and will probably be gotten rid of soon. Anyone know why they changed it? or is there a way to make it more user friendly?
 
Seems to me you already have it figured out...

As far as your "user friendly", I take it as a joke. Vista is more friendly toward the stupid end user than anything else (maybe OS X... but that is dumbed down so much it is ridiculous) out there. People who used to not even know how to change the darned desktop can change it in Vista. They understand the "Documents, Pictures, and Videos" folders now. More importantly- they cannot screw up the system with user-level access anymore ;)
 
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