XP Oddities

[Smitty]

Ok, this one is really P%$$!ng me off, moreso that my IS Department can't figure it out either. (So figuring it out will be gratifiying to say the least).

I have XP on my laptop and something irritating has started happening. In any program, goto File-->Open and in your favorites all of a sudden are these USELESS folders: "My eBooks", "My Music", "My Pictures", "My Downloads". (Nope, can't figure out where to put ANY of those on my own...) Delete them and they come back one by one. One of our Pre-Press guys said he just ignores them; it's an XP thing. Note that "My Pictures" always shows up when you try to insert a picture into a PowerPoint document (my current curse project of the week...)

We unistalled SP2 due to "issues", but IS does push start the MS updates for us...

I'm thinking that it's probably got to do with some registry settings, but not knowing that side, I'm not even going to start messing with it.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Smitty

EDIT: Horrible spelling, as usual.

 

[starl]

Try this: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article05-100

 

[Smitty]

That's awesome Tracy, thanks!

Now the only problem is that I view hidden files, so I know what I'm giving my users...

Just tried it though, so we'll see how it works. Sometimes things seem so simple they just plum elude you...

Thanks again,

Smitty

 

[Smitty]

That method works for a bit, but then XP renames the text files and those **** folders show up again.

Here's another alternative I found (becasue I got really fed up!):

Change the location of the My Music or My Pictures Folders

In Windows 2000, Microsoft added the ability to right-click the My Documents folder and choose a new location for that folder in the shell. With Windows XP, Microsoft has elevated the My Music and My Pictures folders to the same "special shell folder" status of My Documents, but they never added a similar (and simple) method for changing those folder's locations. However, it is actually pretty easy to change the location of these folders, using the following method.

Open a My Computer window and navigate to the location where you'd like My Music (or My Pictures) to reside. Then, open the My Documents folder in a different window. Drag the My Music (or My Pictures) folder to the other window, and Windows XP will update all of the references to that folder to the new location, including the Start menu.

Smitty