Jimmy,
Where ya been?
You are da MAN; when it comes to this stuff.
I have been very busy the past couple weeks with other obligations ... but I
am still here and am not going anywhere
.
What's up with this?
Why the "hall of mirrors" ? Is this bug city;or what?
And you know me;not a techy kinda guy-lol
So a "lotta" help here; please.
This does seem at first to be a bug, but this is actually the way it is
intended to work, although you should never be able to actually see the hall
of mirrors unless the default security has been changed on those junctions.
The reason this "hall of mirrors" is necessary is partly because of the way
junctions work and partly because of the way stuff is organized in Vista (as
compared to XP).
Documents and Settings is an example of an application compatability
junction, and is meant to silently redirect programs that access it to the
"Users" folder. The default security settings on these "application
compatability" junctions is configured so that programs that try to list the
contents of the junction as if it were a folder will fail, but programs that
are "passing through" one of the junctions to get to another file or folder
will work. This allows the junctions to do their job in most cases while
preventing the hall-of-mirrors effect from occuring.
For example, trying to browse the contents of "c:\documents and settings\"
will fail with access denied, but browsing to "c:\documents and
settings\public\" will work because you are "passing through" the documents
and settings junction to get to another folder. In this case, it would look
to the program (and you) as if it were accessing "c:\documents and
settings\public\", but it is really accessing "c:\users\public\".
The reason there is recursion inside the AppData folder is because Windows
Vista has combined two Windows XP folders (The "Local Settings" and "Local
Settings\Application Data" folders) into a single folder, "AppData\local".
In order to allow this to happen, two junctions needed to be created:
1) A Local Settings junction needed to be created that would redirect
programs accessing Local Settings to the new AppData\local folder. In this
case, a program accessing "C:\Documents and Settings\jimmy\Local
Settings\file.ini" would get silently redirected to
"C:\Users\jimmy\AppData\local\file.ini".
But ... what about that Application Data folder inside the Local Settings
folder? If a program tried to access this folder in Windows Vista, it would
end being redirected to "C:\Users\jimmy\AppData\local\Application Data". But
this is not what we want, since we have combined the Local Settings and
Application Data folder into one folder, AppData\local. We need to make it
so that programs accessing that Application Data folder ALSO get pointed to
AppData\local.
To do this, we create another junction inside AppData\local called
Application Data that points "back on itself" - to AppData\local. This way,
a program that accesses a file - say "C:\Documents and Settings\jimmy\Local
Settings\Application Data\file.ini" - will access the correct new location
for that file in Windows Vista - "C:\Users\jimmy\AppData\local\file.ini".
This creates the odd situation of a "hall of mirrors" effect - but since
these junctions are set up to disallow browsing INTO the junctions, and only
allow PASSING THROUGH them, as I explained earlier, there is no way to see
the hall of mirrors, unless the default security on these junctions are
changed to allow directly accessing them.
It sounds like the security settings on your Beta 2 installation were
modified so that directly browsing to the application compatability
junctions was allowed, which allowed you to see this hall of mirrors.
Oh; and while I got your attention; why; in 5728; am I getting denials;
trying to even;look;not do anything; at system files?
This is the expected behavior if you are accessing one of the "application
compatability" junctions as I described earlier - unfortunately you will
need to learn the folder that has replaced the folder you are trying to
access. You can do this easily from the command prompt by typing "dir /a" -
it will show the new location of the old folders in brackets.
Jeff
P.S. Hi
Hello, nice talking to you again.
- JB
Windows Vista Support FAQ
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/