Windows XP network drive

[Tony D]

I'm helping my favorite nephew. He has an XP-Pro, SP-2 machine that he bought from his company. He has one hard drive. It shows a few network drives in My Computer. One of them (H:) seems to be the same drive as the C drive if you look at disk space used and disk space available.

 

His My Documents icon on the desktop points to the H drive. I thought I could find his documents in Documents and Settings / User / Documents folder, but there are no documents in that folder. They are in H:.

 

I don't understand what's going on here. Can anyone shed some light on this?

[Guest Wolfeymole]

So we have one drive with partitions Tony yes?

 

Is one shown as System?

 

Can you drop some kind of screen shot of just what partitions are what please.

[danzil]

mmmm ok.

has the machine got folder re-direction turned on in group policy.

i would first try adding another user to the laptop with admin rights.then see if that has a proper my docs.if so you can then move his data to the relevant directories and remove that profile.

let me know if that helps or not...

What is the h: directory is it a simpl folder share or another partition

right click he h: drive and view its properties, then post back.

i will see if i can help some more.

regards

danzil

:)

[Tony D]

The H: drive properties has only one tab titled GENERAL. It show the same disk usage as the C drive. It also has an icon of a network drive and says that it's offline.

 

When I open it, it looks like a typical MY DOCUMENTS folder with files, folders, the the standard My Music and My Pictures folders.

 

Wolfey - please tell me how to take a screen shot of the My Computer and H: windows. There's probably a sticky somewhere, but I'm sure you have this on the top of your head.

 

I'll creat a new user and see what happens. See you in a few minutes.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

In Disk Management just hit PrintScreen Tony and open Paint and hit paste and save as .jpeg.

[danzil]

copy the data from h: (if its needed) to your nephews docs and settings directory, remove all shares....

you should then have a remotely normal xp setup......is this computer currently on a domain...if so it maybe loading local policys installed on that machine.

remove it from the domain if you can, just go to start>control panel>system>computer name. just click on workgroup and put in any name you like,.,,,,you may be prompted for an admin password though.

see if that helps...let me know if im off the mark here.

regards

danzil

:)

[Tony D]

Here's My Computer

[Tony D]

The machine was on the company domain. In Computer Name, is shows as being on a Domain instead of a Workgroup. The domain is left over from when the computer was in use at his company. Now that he's purchased it and using it at home, there is no domain anymore.

 

I can copy the files to C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\My Documents, but I'm concerned about the DRM on his iTunes purchased music.

[danzil]

ok is the computer still set as logging onto the domain though, because if it is it maybe picking up folfer redirect or any other group policy settings set up by there admin,,,,there is a mass you can in group policy so i still would try removing it from the domain..

i-tunes should be fine copied over,,, load up itunes again it may ask to re-sync let it do so..then just pop the songs aback in the playlists and re-sync

regards:)

danzil

[Guest Wolfeymole]

I'd back up all the personal stuff and format the thing and start again.

 

Still need to see what's happening in Disk Management.

[danzil]

i dis-agree if it is just GP causing this or something similar.then dropping it from the domain and logging in locally to the machine under a new account will cure this

regards

danzil

:)

ps/but if there isnt anything major on there needed then yes indeed format it.

 

edited:i will learn to spell one day

[Tony D]

OK folks. I'm at my nephew's now. I'm going to take this machine home with me, make an image and try to pull it off the Domain and into a Workgroup. If it doesn't work, I'll have a backup and can restore from there.

 

Thanks for you help and sorry I haven't been on these last few days as I'm tied up with out of the office work. I've been turning down computer repairs until mid-Sept, but had to help my favorite nephew.

[danzil]

ok let me know if i can help anymore when you are back home

regards

danzil

:)

[Dalo Harkin]

It just sounds like they have moved the my documents for backup purposes - you can set the my documents to be stored elsewhere - I cannot remember off hand - but thats what it sounds like the company have done - we do it at our place - everyones documents are on one HDD and its just for recovery if needed.

As Danzil has said you should just be able to move the my documents - and then if you save something to the my documents it may refuse and give an error saying - cannot find folder in.............etc

If thats the case as Danzil has said a redirection has been placed on the folder.