Reclaim your My Documents folder

[legionaire]

How to reclaim your My Documents folder

Here is a short tutorial on how to prevent the automatic re-creation of subfolders in My Documents by intrusive software. This approach involves using secondary logon to run the rougue software under different credentials. Your own My Documents will then no longer be accessible from the perspective of the software. Additionally, you can deny the secondary account write access to its own My Documents folder.

As a secondary account you can either use the Guest account or a new account with administrative rights. The latter option is useful only if you want to be able to navigate into your own My Documents folder using the software in question for open/save operations.

To invoke secondary logon, use the following shell command:

runas /profile /user:YourPcName\Guest /savecred "C:\...\software.exe /switches"

This command line can either be entered as the target of a shortcut to a software executable or as a registry entry.

The following example demonstrates how to get rid of Skype's "My Skype..." folders.

Open up the registry editor and navigate to the following key:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Run

Modify the Skype entry as follows:

runas /profile /user:YourPcName\Guest /savecred "C:\...\skype.exe /nosplash /minimized"

Now, upon first reboot after this modification a cmd window will pop up asking for the password of Guest (hit return if the password is blank). However, you will not have to re-enter this password ever again as the /savecred switch will save it.

• Attention XP Home users
  Sadly, /savecred does not work for Windows XP Home. If you're running XP Home, please download the freeware utility CPAU from

http://www.joeware.net/win/free/tools/cpau.htm. Also, make sure that Guest has a non-blank password like e.g. "guest".
Your autostart entry will then have to be replaced by a batch file, e.g. C:\...\skype.bat. This skype.bat should read as follows:
cd\
cd Path to directory where you store CPAU
CPAU -u YourPCName\Guest -p password -ex "C:\...\skype.exe /nosplash /minimized" -profile
exit

From now on, Skype will be bothering the My Documents folder of Guest only. If you want to further restrain Skype, edit the permissions of Guest's My Documents folder and deny write access to Guest. Skype will then be unable to recreate its "My Skype..." folders.

Please note that Skype will attempt to store any new profile picture in My Documents\My Skype Pictures and will pop up an error message if it has been denied write access. To work around this issue, copy your picture file to Guest's My Documents folder, allow Guest write access and open the image in Skype. Once the new picture has been successfully applied to your Skype profile, you can again deny write access and delete the My Skype Pictures folder. All you need to do is leave the picture file in the My Documents folder.

Edited May 16, 2006 by legionaire

[DigeratiPrime]

nice tip, welcome to msfn!

[LLXX]

What I normally do to programs like this is edit the program file itself to remove the offending directory name (null it out). Most of them will just ignore the failed directory creation and continue working properly.

[legionaire]

@DigeratiPrime: Thank you, glad to be here.

@LLXX: I just tried removing all 'My Skype...' folder entries from the Skype executable using a text editor (UltraEdit). Didn't work though, it produced an error message when I tried to start the modified exe. Is there anything else to consider when doing it your way?

[LLXX]

Don't use a text editor... you need hex editor.

Text editor doesn't work well on binary files.

[legionaire]

Ok, I just realized what you meant by zero-filling the string in question - zero-filling the hex values and not just deleting the text string. However, I'm still having no luck with editing the skype executable. Probably I have violated some sort of checksum and short of decompiling the executable I don't see a way around that.

I gather that you don't use Skype...maybe you can recommend an alternative VoIP-IM-program? If you have the time you're welcome to try editing the latest skype executable yourself to check if I missed something - however, it seems to me that the only plaintext entries of "My Skype Content" or "My Skype Pictures" are from the multilingual help file.

I might add at this point that the reason for the tutorial I posted above was the fact that Skype seemed to be immune to whatever measures you took in order to prevent the creation of its My Documents subfolders. That is to say that attempts to edit both registry entries and .xml configuration files have so far turned out to be futile.

Edited May 18, 2006 by legionaire

[ripken204]

i just hide the folders that keep coming back... but ur way is good too,thx

[DigeratiPrime]

using a hex editor to null out the code is not for the faint of heart.

I use "Portable Skype" - a NSIS Launcher - and it seems to not have this problem. I haven't tested it extensively though.

http://portableapps.com/node/751

http://www.robloach.net/projects/portableskype

btw a good Skype alternative is OpenWengo and Gizmo.