How do I manage multiple users with relocated profile folders on Vista?

Question

I just bought a new PC with Vista installed on it. I have a second hard drive on which I keep all of my data. I also have a wife.

Before the wife, everything was simple: I told XP to relocate all of the various "My whatever" folders to specific places on the data drive, and all was well. I had a directory structure like this:

E:
    Documents
        My Pictures
        My Music
        My Videos
        ...

When my wife joined the household, I addressed the problem by creating another root-level folder on the data drive. Now we have something like this:

E:
    Documents
        My Pictures
        My Music
        My Videos
        ...
    Wife
        My Pictures
        My Music
        My Videos
        ...

When setting up the new machine, I did just as I did in XP: I right-clicked the Documents folder and told it where I really wanted it. The trouble is, Vista really really wants to call the folder "Documents". Now, my directory structure on both users looks like this:

E:
    Documents
        Pictures
        Music
        Videos
        ...
    Documents
        Pictures
        Music
        Videos
        ...

It still sorts alphabetically based on the real name of the folder, so I have no problems sorting out which one is which, but I'm afraid this is going to be a stumbling point.

I have a similar problem with another folder. I wanted E:\Documents\junkdrawer\Downloads to be the location of my Downloads folder, but screwed up and made E:\Documents\junkdrawer the folder the first time. Now, the shell displays both folders as if they were the profile folder.

How do I rename Vista's "friendly name" for these folders to reflect something I want?

Answer 1

to relocate Special Folders in Vista, right click on each folder, go to properties > location and take it from there.

you'll have to do this for each and every folder separately.

for Windows XP, there is a nice tool written by some gentle soul, called the Folder Redirector. unfortunately, there is no such utility for Vista (to the best of my knowledge).

Edit: what you see in windows explorer is atcually NOT the real name of the folder. 2 options: use a decent file manager, that will not get 'confused' by the silly desktop.ini files (e.g. Total Commander :). or edit the desktop.ini (a hidden file) inside the folders accordingly. the line of interest looks like this:

LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21770

change that to:

LocalizedResourceName=Wife's Documents

or whatever you wish to appear in windows explorer.

note: backup the files before making changes.