Friday, August 15, 2008

Miss your C:\Users when on XP? Here’s a tip for you (Spoiler: Junction points...)

Ramon Smits - You want C:\Users on XP too? Read here how

"At both home and work I use Vista and XP resulting me typing "C:\Users" in XP and "C:\Documents and Settings" in Vista which - of course - don't work. You cannot really change those paths except when you install Vista or XP with the pre configuration tool.

But there is a solution!

Both Vista and XP can access NTFS volumes and the NTFS format has support for hardlinks. XP and 2003 do not have native support for all these NTFS features and you normally need a resourcekit tool to create such entries. The Link Shell Extension adds all support for these NTFS features to the Windows Explorer in XP, 2003 and Vista...."

I play the Vista/XP switch game too and Ramon's suggestion makes pretty good sense in hindsight... Junction Points are just so easy to forget about in the current Windows world (though in Vista they are a little more used and visible)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
NTFS Junction Points in C# & P/Invoke - Post Series
Explorer Shell Extension to Create and Delete NTFS Hard Link/Junction/Reparse Points
Junction Shell Extensions 1.1 Released

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