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My Documents folder is a chaotic vortex.

BalgairBalgair Registered User regular
edited January 2011 in Help / Advice Forum
I converted to Mac, then back to PC for financial reasons. I built a new PC and have actually been not so disappointed with Windows 7 so far. However, the "My Documents" folder seems to be an uncontrollable aggregator for random shit. I'm pretty anal about organization and try my best to keep my file structure squeaky clean, but windows or whatever apps I happen to install keep fighting me on this.

When prompted to install some shit, I always default to C:\Program Files (x86), as it seems pretty logical. Where else would I want my software? But 30 seconds later, I find that Program X has deposited a nice stack of arbitrary files into "My Documents." What's up with that? I just want everything consolidated and in its proper, categorical place. Also, I'd like to reserve "My Documents" for other stuff like, um, my documents.

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Posts

  • ZeonZeon Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Unfortunately you cant do that. For whatever reason, in the last 10 years a lot of devs have decided that "My Documents" is a great place to store savegames and settings files and other random shit for their game. Bugs me too, but if you move those files, youll break whatever program theyre associated with (and more than likely, it will just recreate those folders). Sorry.

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  • EtheaEthea Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Zeon wrote: »
    Unfortunately you cant do that. For whatever reason, in the last 10 years a lot of devs have decided that "My Documents" is a great place to store savegames and settings files and other random shit for their game. Bugs me too, but if you move those files, youll break whatever program theyre associated with (and more than likely, it will just recreate those folders). Sorry.

    Programs are moving to saving into My Documents because of user control. Non administrator accounts can't write to files in Program Files.

    Ethea on
  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    And if you're ever reformatting, backing up simply the My Documents folder is a large majority of your concern, as everything else is replaceable. (mostly)

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  • corky842corky842 Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I just make a folder in there called "_documents" in there for actual documents. The underscore makes it show up at the top of the list.

    corky842 on
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