Try Using GoodSync

Hey James,

Did you ever get this working? Although I had a workaround in place (see above), I’ve got a new issue because one of the computers (my wife’s) has iTunes installed. iTunes insists on creating a folder within the My Music folder on launch which is then causing an error on the Vista PC when it tries to sync.

I was hoping you had found a fix for this you could share.

I’ve always synced one level lower. My Documents\shared is synced across all of my machines, rather than just My Documents.

I’ve had the same issue. I found a solution, although it did mean giving up Vista’s folder structure. In short (using Pictures as the exmaple), I didn’t use either Vista’s or XP’s native folder. I just created a folder within My Documents (on XP) called “Pictures” and put them in there. I did the same with Music, Videos, etc.

The result is my Vista “Pictures” folder and my XP “My Pictures” folder are empty and all my pics are my own folder: (My) Documents\Pictures.

For real fun try Windows for Workgroups on a current vintage machine it rawks more than XP could.

group hug

“I just need to get permissions set to allow this to happen (and prevent the problem from happening again in the future).”

There’s the rub. While I was using Vista, UAC frustrated me at every turn. I decided to be a trooper and leave it on, but it prevented me from doing what should have been some very routine operations (such as saving a Favorite bookmark in IE7).

Btw, this weekend I finally “downgraded” from Vista to XP on my new laptop. So far, I couldn’t be happier. It feels comfortable, again. Now, not only can I use all of the other hardware I own (but which didn’t have Vista drivers and, due to age, probably never will), but everything just feels “natural.” And, although I can’t prove it, everything seems to be snappier.

I appreciate all the good ideas but I’m trying to keep this simple. I like the documents file structure in Vista. The junction points in Vista are designed to handle this syncing properly, I just need to get permissions set to allow this to happen (and prevent the problem from happening again in the future).

I forgot to add, I actually redirect the folders to a subdirectory called “Files,” i.e.:

Documents -> Z:\Files\Documents
Music -> Z:\Files\Music
etc.

That way, assuming the folder structure is the same on all your Vista and XP PCs, you can just sync the “Files” subdirectory.

JK, take a look at the second link I posted above. Vista lets you easily change the location of these folders — much easier than with XP. In fact, the capability is “built-in” instead of requiring a Tweak UI-type application. If I understand your problem correctly, I think this will work for you:

“Use folder redirection to map your User folders to the equivalent folders on the Z drive [or wherever you'd like to re-direct them] – and put ALL of your personal files in these folders.

“This is an important step; you should always know exactly where your most important files are being stored. The easiest way to do this is to mirror the C:\Users\[username] folder in terms of structure, so whenever you’re working with “Documents” launched from Explorer or from the Start menu, you know exactly what you’re working on.

“This is how I map the folders inside “Mike”:

Desktop – Z:\Desktop
Favorites – Z:\Favorites
Documents – Z:\Documents
Music – Z:\Music
Pictures – Z:\Files\Pictures
Videos – Z:\Files\Videos

“For whatever reason, there isn’t a way to just map the [username] folder – instead you have to map each folder underneath it individually.

“Update, 8/10: I forgot to mention how to do this. It’s actually pretty easy, you just need to right-click on the folder (i.e. Desktop) and go to Properties. Then go to the Location tab and specify the new location (i.e. Z:\Desktop) and click OK. You can see a screenshot of how to do this here.”

Also, if you do this, make sure you create the “new” folders first before you redirect the “old” folders to them.

These symbolic links in Vista are called junction points by MS and I just found the following disturbing info about them in a KB (I was searching how to change the permissions so FolderShare could work):

By default, a junction point has the following settings after you upgrade Windows XP to Windows Vista:
• The attribute of a junction point is hidden.
• The Read permission of a junction point is Deny.
If you change these default settings, the system will become unstable.

The unstable part is what really concerns me.

Lyle, I have used the My Documents structure because it works fine for me and a lot of programs I use expect to put stuff there. It was always just easier to use it as Windows desired.

This problem is turning into a symbolic link problem in Vista that is preventing FolderShare from being able to create sub-folders in the linked structure. I still favor FolderShare and wish to use it here as it’s always worked favorably for me. It is durn near bullet-proof itself.

James I’m surprised to hear that a sophisticated user like yourself is using the default “My Documents” folder for anything at all. Years ago, I read many comments about how people’s profiles would get corrupted by Windows and they would lose the ability to get anything stored in this directory since it is tied to your user account.

For many years I have created my own C:\Data or D:\Data directories. This also makes it much easier when I want to do a backup because all of my data is in a central location. Of course there are still a few programs out there that insist on putting their data stores somewhere else, most irritatingly in their program folder.

I currently use SyncToy to synchronize about 50GB of data between a work and home PC. It’s funny that you’re writing this post now because just this week I went and downloaded the FolderShare installer based on reading your postings about it. I haven’t yet had a chance to set it up, but I’m hoping that I can have it synchronize any folders that I choose, and not just the default “My Documents” stuff. Please let us know if you find a solution to this problem since I would also be trying to synchronize between various machines that have XP and Vista.

I don’t use vista, but you may want to check out sysinternals “junction” utility to manipulate these links. There can be some utilties more specific for vista too.

I believe vista uses junction points for these folders from this link: http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/joshs_blog/archive/2006/09/28/Windows-Vista-Junction-Points.aspx

As for how their ACL looks like:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/06/ACL/default.aspx?loc=en

Good luck!

I have been playing with this all morning and cannot get Vista to let me change either the attributes nor the permissions for the “My Documents” symbolic links. This must be the problem that FolderShare is running into. Anybody know how to do this?

Vista introduced the concept of Symbolic links to the Windows NTFS file system. Linux/Unix has had ‘SymLinks’ for quite a while now. If you open a command prompt in your Documents folder and do a ‘dir /ahp’ (going from memory here – if it doesn’t work, do dir /? and look for the switches for all files and hidden files).

You’ll notice that My Pictures and My Music are Symlinks to the User\Pictures and User\Music directories. You may be able to modify the permissions on those links to make it easier for FolderShare to work. I haven’t played much with the Vista Symlinks yet, as I have my Vista laptop mount the Samba home directory share, where I’ve done my Symlinking on the Linux Fileserver.

Hope that helps!

/Mike