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All, Occasionally I use xcopy or robocopy to copy my documents folder as a backup. The issue is no matter what I name it, say MD_Backup, Windows always renames it to My Documents. I'd really like it to not do that. Anyone have a solution?

Thanks in advance

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  • Not really a programming question, nudging over to SU.
    – user53528
    Mar 16, 2013 at 4:13

1 Answer 1

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This is because there is a hidden file within the My Documents folder named desktop.ini that is telling Windows that the folder is special and should always be named My Documents even though the folder name on disk may be different.

Deleting the desktop.ini file should revert the folder to the name you are expecting to see. You may need to enable viewing hidden files as well as system files (in the same place as enabling hidden files).

After you delete the file you'll want to re-hide system files at least in order to not see the desktop.ini files on your desktop and everywhere else.

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  • Thank you, thank you, Mokubai! I recently got a new SSD, installed an almost-fresh Win7 on it (restored from a backup which I'd made from when the old HDD installation was fresh). I moved the HDD to 2nd SATA connector (though it'll still boot, if necessary). Then I made a temporary admin user ID on the SSD installation, and used it to redirect my Documents, Downloads & Videos folders to the corresponding folders on the HDD, via Junctions, like this: "cd \Users\Dave", "ren Videos Videos_SSD". "mklink /j Videos F:\Users\Dave\Videos" etc.. But Explorer was confused. Your advice fixed it. Sep 28, 2015 at 23:30

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