How to change "My XXXX" folder locations (helping you, not a request for your help!)

[The late XV105]

As usual, registry hacking is done at our own risk, take a backup, yadda yadda.
Right, warning over with...

Knowing others on this forum also enjoy their video editing and therefore, like me, probably have audio visual files spread across not just multiple directories but multiple HDDs in order to reduce read/write bottlenecks, I thought I'd share something I did today.

For the record I use "XP SP2 Media Center Edition 2005" but expect the same principle to apply to all flavours of XP.

In simple terms I have "text documents", "video & stills", and "audio files" on three separate HDDs but have long been frustrated that XP tells me where it will create the "My Music" and "My Pictures" folders. Sure, it's easy to change the location of "My Documents" but the same isn't true of "My Music" and "My Pictures" since (in my version of XP at least) these are always created as subdirectories of "My Documents".

So, when I changed "My documents" to the actual location of my "text documents", My Music and My Pictures followed suit. The result is that I ended up with two folders (My Music and My Pictures that I simply ignored and which remained empty).

The following registry hack however solves the problem. In so doing it also allows my Microsoft Wireless Multimedia keyboard "media buttons" to open the correct folders for My Documents, My Pictures, and My Music (since whilst you can reconfigure the keys in terms of what they do, you can't change which folder they open if opening a folder is what they do)

1. Click Start / Run
2. Type "regedit" without the quotes, and press Enter
3. Navigate to key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\User Shell Folders
4. Double click the Key called "Personal" (this is actually My Documents although it is not named as such)
5. Change the file path to what you want (in my case F:\ )
6. Add a new Key called My Music
7. Double click it
8. Add the file path you want (In my case E:\ )
9. Add a new Key called My Pictures
10. Double click it
11. Add the file path you want (In my case H:\ )
12. Close the Registry Editor
13. Reboot
14. In the start folder rename the new new entries to "My xxxx" if you wish to, noting there may be a short delay before this takes hold.

Job done.

For info: Something I observed was that whilst I had to add "My Music" and "My Pictures" to the registry, "My Videos" already existed as well as "Personal" (My Documents). I have deleted My Videos as I don't need the differentiation from My Pictures with the categorisation methodology I use.

Hope this helps somebody!

XV105

[Mac the Knife]

Or you can use TweakUI XP from the MS PowerToys

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/D...powertoys.mspx

[The late XV105]

What's worse is I installed TweakUI yonks ago for something else, and clean forgot to check it for this need! At least I had fun learning and doing it.

[Bushfiva]

Um, you could simply move "My Pictures", for example, from "My Documents" to wherever you want it to go, and click "yes" if Windows asks whether it should move desktop.ini.

[Parapunter]

Agreed. All the run>regedit>msconfig>bios>dl merchants!! Windows is sufficiently user friendly for nearly all problems to be solved with a little gumption & a few right clicks in the right place.

A lot of people on here solve problems they never had!!