I'm sure this has been asked before, but, I can't find an answer on the forums.

XP install went a bit nutty and I've had to reinstall, it seems to have installed over itself and now my C:\Documents and Settings\ has some duplicate folders.

All Users

All Users.WINDOWS

Default User

Default User.WINDOWS

Ian

Ian.MACHINENAME

LocalService

LocalService.NT AUTHORITY

NetworkService

NetworkService.NT AUTHORITY

It seems to be using Ian.MACHINENAME, now my question is can I remove the non .SOMETHING directories or should I try renaming the .SOMETHING's to without .SOMETHINGS

Hope that makes sense, any advice appreciated.

Ta

Ian

Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on.

--Zxian

Should be possible to delete the without.SOMETHING without any problems. Perhaps first check, if there is any newer file in the without.SOMETHING directories, only to be sure.

Better yet, does anybody know why these redundant folders are created in the first place, and the best way to prevent them? It's kind of annoying to have to perform this cleanup detail after each Windows installation.

They are made so you don't lose any info during a reinstall...lots of important stuff hides in there, so it's better to leave the previous files be and just create new profiles. The best way to avoid it is to not do a half-a** reinstall. A full reload is the only option in my opinion...partly because of this issue.

In the end this rarely hurts anything, because most of the info in the original folders isn't linked to the new install...but it does make for a very untiddy folder. Also, certain scritps or applications that don't use variables might run into issues with this, so it's best to just try and avoid it at all costs.

As for a tip, if you must reload without formatting, I generally boot into BartPE and move all the original files and folders into a 'backup' folder. It's nothing special, but by moving them out of the root of the drive you don't get problems like this thread. Then after the reload you can root through the dir for files before erasing them. Of course if you had a virus then this process isn't recommended, as the virus would still be on the drive during a reload.