| Just got XP. Why can't I delete the Shared Documents
| Folder under My Computer if I don't intend to use it?
| Also, in Windows Explorer, why is there a separate
| category of "My Documents" right after Desktop that
| repeats the personal folder under My Computer just below.
| Isn't this confusing to the user?
Yes, it is confusing, until you understand the concepts they're
using. IMO: You might want to reconsider not using it; have you
read up on it in Help and Support? Very handy.
Anyway, the reason you find duplicates is because there is a
heirarchy of users, even if you're the only user. EACH user has
his own Shared folder, My Documents folder, etc. etc.. I got
pretty confused the first time I searched for "My Documents and
it found three of them and could not understand any value to its
being buried under all those other folders, until I finally got
used to the setup. XP is multi-user oriented and that confuses a
lot of people.
Becasue it's multi-user, some of those folders are system
folders and should not/can not be deleted or moved without
special operations. To move them, you have to go to their
Properties window and use the Move button you find there; they
will not correctly copy to another location and still get used,
they might turn out to be just a shortcut, even though you
thought you created a new folder, etc. etc. etc. As you can tell
from the probably mistakes in my descrips I'm no guru, but I've
learned enough to be dangerous so far.
If you use the My Documents folder, you'll find everything in the
system set up to default to that folder. Whenever you go to Save
anything, you're going to be sent to the My Documents folder by
default, so if you use (or create a new) a folder in there, ALL
of the data you create becomes localized and is actually easier
to find later on. Each user on your machine has their own My
Documents folder, along with several others.
Easeist way to figure things out is to look thru the structure
with the Windows Explorer.
It also makes backups and archiving easier since all your data
folders are in the My Documents structure. Backup that folder
and all of its contents up, and all your data is backed up.
In my case, I wanted all of my data on a separate hard drive,
so that's how I figured out how to move it. I wanted my OS and
all executables and libs on one disk, and all my data on another
for easy backups and for keeping things separated cleanly.
Now, why it takes a newsgroup and web sites to find out this crap
is beyond me: You'd think MS would tell you about it in enough
detail to make it usable, but that's never been MS's forte. I
think their engineers and coders write their docu for them.
Anyway, that's it from my two cent piece.
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