How to make the Personal Files folder *normal*

[Xenomorph]

Tell me. What kind of folder is your Home folder? (C:\Users\YourName)

Is it a Virtual folder? a Search folder?

Vista does not treat it like a normal folder. I want to know why, and how to change it.

I have information / questions on it here:

http://xenomorph.net/?page_id=491

While doing searches on the subject, I found this page, which has similar questions:

http://darkknight.thinkers-inc.com/blogs/c...ders_3F00_.aspx

Again, Vista doesn't treat it like a normal folder. It doesn't even treat it like the usual other File/Image/Music/etc folder types it handles.

It's it own virtual folder/normal folder type hybrid. When you open it, it does not display it's actual contents. It displayed an indexed listing (even with indexing turned off). Supposedly, in beta, you could make your own virtual folders. They would display contents as specified in an XML file.

In detail view, it even has a "Folder path" column that shows the real location of some of the files / folders.

Again, I want to know what kind of folder it is, and how to change it to a normal folder so that no indexing/XML is required to display the contents. I'm hoping its a registry key I could toggle or something else really simply I may have overlooked.

Edit:

To try and see where the paths are stored, I moved a folder "Game Saves" to D:\Crap. The folder still shows up in my Home folder though. The "Folder path" column shows the actual location of D:\Crap for the "Games Saves" folder.

Doing a search in the registry for "\Crap" gives me this location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

I want to know where the contents of the home folder / "Personal files" folder are actually stored, if its an XML file somewhere or what. I also want to know how to make it a normal folder.

Thoughts?

[Stead]

I always thought the users folder was the real folder for documents and settings, and they used a hardlink (i think its hard link, or junction?) so both paths are correct however they both point to the same folder...

Theres a program out there someware which shows all the current hardlinks/junctions on your computer and allows you to make new ones...maybe that would help explain it.

[Xenomorph]

I always thought the users folder was the real folder for documents and settings, and they used a hardlink (i think its hard link, or junction?) so both paths are correct however they both point to the same folder...

Theres a program out there someware which shows all the current hardlinks/junctions on your computer and allows you to make new ones...maybe that would help explain it.

well, yes, \Users is a real folder and \Documents and Settings is a junction to \Users.

but that doesnt have anything to do with the users' personal folder. its a real location, but what is displayed in that folder may be folders (and files?) from multiple locations - even on different physical drives.

Explorer doesn't list the files/folders in the the personal folder, it lists a dynamically generated listing - and i dont know where that listing is stored or where the settings are that control Windows display the personal folder that way.