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Can I Find My Desktop on Old Hard Drive and OS?Is it possible to navigate to the files I had on my Desktop on a hard drive that I am no longer using?
I installed an SSD hard drive, and I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Pro on it. I am able to access My Documents from the old hard drive, as I had that on a separate partition from the OS; but I can't find the desktop from the older installation. |
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sivranVive Vivaldi Premium Member join:2003-09-15 Irving, TX |
sivran
Premium Member
2014-Jan-12 5:29 pm
Yes. Well you didn't ask how. |
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takeahikeYou sure ask a lot of dumb questions Premium Member join:2005-01-07 Catacombs
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to TomBrooklyn
Depends on the OS. If it's XP there's a "desktop" folder under the user name. If Vista, 7 or later under users look in the "internet sites" folder for the user in question--it's in there. Don't know why it has that name but it does--took me a long time to figure this one out, too. |
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dave Premium Member join:2000-05-04 not in ohio |
dave
Premium Member
2014-Jan-12 7:39 pm
My Windows 7 systems have the desktop called "desktop" as usual. There is no "internet sites" folder anywhere.
This could be a bizarre customization from your computer vendor. |
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dib22 join:2002-01-27 Kansas City, MO |
to TomBrooklyn
path to desktop in Windows 95, 98, ME
c:\windows\desktop
Path to desktop in Windows 2K, 2000, 2003, XP
c:\documents and settings\(USERNAME)\desktop
Path to desktop in Windows Vista, 7, 8
c:\Users\(USERNAME)\Desktop
So just replace c: with whatever drive it is mounted as and replace (USERNAME) with the real username you are after. |
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takeahikeYou sure ask a lot of dumb questions Premium Member join:2005-01-07 Catacombs |
to dave
said by dave:My Windows 7 systems have the desktop called "desktop" as usual. There is no "internet sites" folder anywhere.
This could be a bizarre customization from your computer vendor. It says "desktop" when looking at the drive within the operating system but it says "internet sites" when the drive is hooked up secondarily, which I assume is the case here (not a customization). It's strange for sure but that's probably part of why he can't find it, as it would be obvious if it were just called "desktop." |
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dave Premium Member join:2000-05-04 not in ohio |
dave
Premium Member
2014-Jan-12 9:07 pm
I remain convinced that the situation you describe is abnormal. The one true name of the directory is 'desktop', which you can see if you use cmd.exe (not explorer, which has the theoretical capacity to display something that is not the actual name of the directory - though on all my Win7 systems. 'desktop' is displayed as 'desktop').
I'm not sure what you mean by 'hooked up secondarily'. |
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sivranVive Vivaldi Premium Member join:2003-09-15 Irving, TX |
to takeahike
I've never seen anything like you describe. |
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takeahikeYou sure ask a lot of dumb questions Premium Member join:2005-01-07 Catacombs |
to dave
I work on PCs for a living. Secondarily means hooked up as a "d" drive while booting to the c drive (like I said this is how I believe our original poster has it hooked up). Like I said it took me forever to find the desktop on Windows 7 drives I had hooked up like that because it had what I agree is a ridiculous label (as I said it's labeled different than when you see it as the c drive) but that's where you'll find your desktop files and folders. You and sivran should try this before concluding I'm wrong. By the way I hook up these drives to an XP system--I suppose it could be labeled different if the main drive has a different OS. |
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sivranVive Vivaldi Premium Member join:2003-09-15 Irving, TX |
sivran
Premium Member
2014-Jan-12 10:46 pm
dave knows more about the guts of Windows than you or I do. I may not know as much about the intricacies of Windows as dave does, /Understatement but firstly I've never observed any such behavior in any Windows OS, and secondly your assertion makes no sense: why would 7 be unique in such a strange way? |
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takeahikeYou sure ask a lot of dumb questions Premium Member join:2005-01-07 Catacombs 1 edit |
takeahike
Premium Member
2014-Jan-12 10:57 pm
All I can tell you is what I see almost everyday. I agree that it sounds very strange and have no explanation but that's what I see all the time (and how I recover desktop files from non-bootable machines). Just trying to help the OP. It doesn't matter how much you know--there's always things that anyone still hasn't experienced.
Actually I also have an XP drive in this machine and I booted it up for the first time in a long time to see--it does have the label as desktop on mine, but as I said I see it all the time as previously described. I'll post a pic the next time I see it (may take a few days--biz is awfully slow). How do you explain the problem the OP is having if it's as obvious as you think it should be? |
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dave Premium Member join:2000-05-04 not in ohio |
dave
Premium Member
2014-Jan-13 8:22 am
I overlooked the 'older OS' part of the description. So here's a (probably half-assed) theory about what might be happening. Note that Explorer does not claim to display what's in the file system. Radical example: the recycle bin looks like it contains files with the names they originally had, but it doesn't. Lesser example: some files are displayed with so-called 'localized' names (this is a hack for internationalization: user sees name in his local language, but file system has the same name for all languages, so install programs tend to work). 'Desktop' is a directory with an Explorer-localized name. The control for this is in the file desktop.ini (it's mere coincidence that the directory we are talking about, Desktop, has the name name as desktop.ini; the file is always desktop.ini even in other directories). Here's a Win7 Desktop\desktop.ini: [.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21769
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-183
[LocalizedFileNames]
Snipping Tool (2).lnk=@%SystemRoot%\system32\SnippingTool.exe,-15051
Note that the replacement string is given not literally but as an ordinal in a DLL. Guesswork:The ordinal numbers changed between XP and Win7. So whereas -21769 is 'Desktop' in Win7, it's 'whatever' in XP. You could validate this by looking at a Desktop\desktop.ini on the XP system; if my guess is correct, it has a different ordinal number for its own Desktop. |
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takeahikeYou sure ask a lot of dumb questions Premium Member join:2005-01-07 Catacombs 1 edit |
to sivran
I was able to re-create it. The system I booted to is XP and another hard drive with just a basic Windows 7 install is hooked up and comes out with the letter "F" for the OS and "D" for the system reserve created with the install. On the left you see the unopened "internet sites" folder and on the right it's opened with the name then changed to desktop. Note that even where the folder is opened and says desktop it still is labeled "internet sites" on the top left of the dialog box. |
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dave Premium Member join:2000-05-04 not in ohio |
dave
Premium Member
2014-Jan-13 2:07 pm
For a quick check, I edited my desktop.ini file to say LocalizedResourceName=The directory formerly known as Desktop
and got the expected result: the silly string I used was displayed for the directory name in Explorer, though the actual name was (of course) unchanged. (You can use literal strings as well as resources from DLLs) This doesn't exactly replicate the XP/Win7 results, of course, but it strongly suggests that I'm on the right track, namely that the resource identification is inconsistent. Can you post a Desktop\desktop.ini file from your XP system on the C drive, and the corresponding one from F: ? |
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takeahikeYou sure ask a lot of dumb questions Premium Member join:2005-01-07 Catacombs |
Here's the c:\desktop\desktop.ini from the Win 7 drive. When I search for that file in the same location on the XP drive I get no results although they're are many desktop.ini's in other locations on the drive. |
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NormanSI gave her time to steal my mind away MVM join:2001-02-14 San Jose, CA TP-Link TD-8616 Asus RT-AC66U B1 Netgear FR114P
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to takeahike
said by takeahike:Secondarily means hooked up as a "d" drive while booting to the c drive (like I said this is how I believe our original poster has it hooked up). Like this? Extra drive hierarchy.
In the screen shot, "OS (C:)" is my system drive. "Local Disk (I:)" is the "secondary" drive, with a different version of Windows 7, from a different laptop. "Norman (H:)" is a second partition on the "secondary" drive. The whole shebang: Full drive map.
From where I am sitting, the "secondary" drive desktop is labeled, "Desktop". I suppose the map might look different when mounting the "secondary" drive in a Linux system; I am just too lazy to test this.
I also haven't tried from a system booting to Windows XP.
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sivranVive Vivaldi Premium Member join:2003-09-15 Irving, TX 1 edit |
to dave
I looked at two XP drives--the inactive XP64 on my now-secondary hard drive, and the XP32 install on my laptop--both lacked a desktop.ini in the Desktop folder. I was however able to replicate dave's experiment. My desktop is now Not A Desktop. Incidentally when I placed the desktop.ini in the XP install's desktop folder...nothing happened. Viewing my Win8 computer's user directory over the network showed Desktop as normal, which I kind of expected. |
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takeahikeYou sure ask a lot of dumb questions Premium Member join:2005-01-07 Catacombs 1 edit |
takeahike
Premium Member
2014-Jan-13 10:36 pm
All this and where's the OP we are trying to help? |
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BlackbirdBuilt for Speed Premium Member join:2005-01-14 Fort Wayne, IN |
Blackbird
Premium Member
2014-Jan-13 11:46 pm
said by takeahike:All this and where's the OP who we are trying to help? Lost somewhere between Brooklyn and a desktop that's Not A Desktop... |
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