My Pictures

Since I don't like being talked down to if I can avoid it, I've always
resented having to deal with the self-replicating, unkillable "My Pictures"
in Windows Explorer. While it doesn't sink to the level of Clippy, it's also
a lot harder to get rid of.

Some programs with a graphical component, such as Picassa and Canon Scanner
software, default to this folder for saving, but that can be modified by the
user.

I just did a thorough registry search - keys, values, data - for "My
Pictures" and it came up twice as two values plus one data within each of
the two value entries. If I change the folder name in Explorer and then
change all four of these registry notations to reflect the new name, am I
stepping out into the clearing or into the deep doo-doo?

Do let us know when you find out, eg.

I don't know about Win98, but in XP the whole "My..." folder structure is a
subset of the "Personal" environment, aka My Documents, which is itself a
subset of "Documents & Settings". While I haven't played with it much, other
than to move my own My Documents to a different partition (something I
always do) it would seem that the My ... sub-folders tend to tag along with
the whole environment. IOW, I suspect more than just those four entries you
mention are involved.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
Since I don't like being talked down to if I can avoid it, I've always
resented having to deal with the self-replicating, unkillable "My
Pictures"
in Windows Explorer. While it doesn't sink to the level of Clippy, it's
also
a lot harder to get rid of.

Some programs with a graphical component, such as Picassa and Canon
Scanner
software, default to this folder for saving, but that can be modified by
the
user.

I just did a thorough registry search - keys, values, data - for "My
Pictures" and it came up twice as two values plus one data within each of
the two value entries. If I change the folder name in Explorer and then
change all four of these registry notations to reflect the new name, am I
stepping out into the clearing or into the deep doo-doo?

Gary S. Terhune wrote:
Do let us know when you find out, eg.

That sounds like that Stevie Wonder line in Livin' for the City where he
says something like "Hey Kid, wanna make five bucks? Take this bag across
the street..."

I suppose I could do it without too much trouble, provided the boot
sequence, if I'm lucky enough to still have one, allowed me to reach GoBack.

By the way, and for the record, the registry path to My Documents from
HKEY_User and _Current User is
Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders, and I
share your suspicion that this one of those deeply enmeshed items that
wasn't thrown in at 3:00 a.m. the week before final release.

I'll leave it the way it is. Might even reinstall Clippy from the disk while
I'm at it.

There is no question now that, as you've consistently maintained in this
newsgroup, Windows 98 is obsolete. I know this because you're posting your
answers referencing XP, so that the unwashed masses are out of luck, thus
creating a self-fulfilling prophecy! But I'm ahead of the curve. Just bought
a nice clean, legal 2000PRO disc on eBay.


I don't know about Win98, but in XP the whole "My..." folder
structure is a subset of the "Personal" environment, aka My
Documents, which is itself a subset of "Documents & Settings". While
I haven't played with it much, other than to move my own My Documents
to a different partition (something I always do) it would seem that
the My ... sub-folders tend to tag along with the whole environment.
IOW, I suspect more than just those four entries you mention are
involved.


"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
Since I don't like being talked down to if I can avoid it, I've
always resented having to deal with the self-replicating, unkillable
"My Pictures" in Windows Explorer. While it doesn't sink to the
level of Clippy, it's also a lot harder to get rid of.

Some programs with a graphical component, such as Picassa and Canon
Scanner software, default to this folder for saving, but that can be
modified by the user.

I just did a thorough registry search - keys, values, data - for "My
Pictures" and it came up twice as two values plus one data within
each of the two value entries. If I change the folder name in
Explorer and then change all four of these registry notations to
reflect the new name, am I stepping out into the clearing or into
the deep doo-doo?

Roger Fink wrote:
Gary S. Terhune wrote:
Do let us know when you find out, eg.

That sounds like that Stevie Wonder line in Livin' for the City where
he says something like "Hey Kid, wanna make five bucks? Take this bag
across the street..."

I suppose I could do it without too much trouble, provided the boot
sequence, if I'm lucky enough to still have one, allowed me to reach
GoBack.

By the way, and for the record, the registry path to My [sic] Documents
from
HKEY_User and _Current User is
Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders, and
I share your suspicion that this one of those deeply enmeshed items
that wasn't thrown in at 3:00 a.m. the week before final release.

I'll leave it the way it is. Might even reinstall Clippy from the
disk while I'm at it.

There is no question now that, as you've consistently maintained in
this newsgroup, Windows 98 is obsolete. I know this because you're
posting your answers referencing XP, so that the unwashed masses are
out of luck, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy! But I'm ahead
of the curve. Just bought a nice clean, legal 2000PRO disc on eBay.

Shoulda said "My Pictures" up there.


I don't know about Win98, but in XP the whole "My..." folder
structure is a subset of the "Personal" environment, aka My
Documents, which is itself a subset of "Documents & Settings". While
I haven't played with it much, other than to move my own My Documents
to a different partition (something I always do) it would seem that
the My ... sub-folders tend to tag along with the whole environment.
IOW, I suspect more than just those four entries you mention are
involved.


"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
Since I don't like being talked down to if I can avoid it, I've
always resented having to deal with the self-replicating, unkillable
"My Pictures" in Windows Explorer. While it doesn't sink to the
level of Clippy, it's also a lot harder to get rid of.

Some programs with a graphical component, such as Picassa and Canon
Scanner software, default to this folder for saving, but that can be
modified by the user.

I just did a thorough registry search - keys, values, data - for "My
Pictures" and it came up twice as two values plus one data within
each of the two value entries. If I change the folder name in
Explorer and then change all four of these registry notations to
reflect the new name, am I stepping out into the clearing or into
the deep doo-doo?

Actually, at this moment I'm posting from a Win98 machine. I just don't feel
like doing your experimentation for you, eg.

My previous response was alluding to the strange way the whole "personal
environment" paradigm developed over the various editions of Windows, and
the fact that the NT-based versions implement them rather differently than
the 9x versions did, even though their function seems the same.

Really, you shouldn't have any problems from those hacks you're
contemplating. Not of the system-killing type. For safety, export each key
you intend to change before changing it. Then restoring is a simple matter
of merging a REG file. I don't think they're likely to be a problem so much
as I suspect that you won't fully achieve your goals with only those
specific entries. All depends on which app is trying to use the
environmental variables to determine Open/Save locations. Some or most will
probably read the very entries you're talking about, but I suspect that some
will drill down via more circuitous routes, and the pointers may not all
lead to the desired location.

BTW, in case you didn't realize it, those entries in HKCU and HKU are the
same entries. Change one set and the other will already be changed by the
time you get to it. They're just two different representations of the same
database.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
Gary S. Terhune wrote:
Do let us know when you find out, eg.

That sounds like that Stevie Wonder line in Livin' for the City where he
says something like "Hey Kid, wanna make five bucks? Take this bag across
the street..."

I suppose I could do it without too much trouble, provided the boot
sequence, if I'm lucky enough to still have one, allowed me to reach
GoBack.

By the way, and for the record, the registry path to My Documents from
HKEY_User and _Current User is
Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders, and I
share your suspicion that this one of those deeply enmeshed items that
wasn't thrown in at 3:00 a.m. the week before final release.

I'll leave it the way it is. Might even reinstall Clippy from the disk
while
I'm at it.

There is no question now that, as you've consistently maintained in this
newsgroup, Windows 98 is obsolete. I know this because you're posting your
answers referencing XP, so that the unwashed masses are out of luck, thus
creating a self-fulfilling prophecy! But I'm ahead of the curve. Just
bought
a nice clean, legal 2000PRO disc on eBay.


I don't know about Win98, but in XP the whole "My..." folder
structure is a subset of the "Personal" environment, aka My
Documents, which is itself a subset of "Documents & Settings". While
I haven't played with it much, other than to move my own My Documents
to a different partition (something I always do) it would seem that
the My ... sub-folders tend to tag along with the whole environment.
IOW, I suspect more than just those four entries you mention are
involved.


"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
Since I don't like being talked down to if I can avoid it, I've
always resented having to deal with the self-replicating, unkillable
"My Pictures" in Windows Explorer. While it doesn't sink to the
level of Clippy, it's also a lot harder to get rid of.

Some programs with a graphical component, such as Picassa and Canon
Scanner software, default to this folder for saving, but that can be
modified by the user.

I just did a thorough registry search - keys, values, data - for "My
Pictures" and it came up twice as two values plus one data within
each of the two value entries. If I change the folder name in
Explorer and then change all four of these registry notations to
reflect the new name, am I stepping out into the clearing or into
the deep doo-doo?

"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
snip
By the way, and for the record, the registry path to My Documents from
HKEY_User and _Current User is
Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders, and I
share your suspicion that this one of those deeply enmeshed items that
wasn't thrown in at 3:00 a.m. the week before final release.
snip

Look in these keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\User Shell
Folders

You should be able to create whatever folders you wish in Windows Explorer, with
whatever names, to use as your Personal folder and My Pictures folder; and then
modify the associated values in those two keys to refer to the paths to those
folders. I suggest keeping the actual old folders in Windows Explorer, until you
are sure the new ones are being properly found.
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

"This smacks of an insalubrious deed" (Lenny Bruce).
And MacBeth said something similar, as I recall.

In any case, the hacks are done and no smoke is coming out of the back of
the computer, at least not yet. If anything untoward happens I will post
back, angrily blaming everyone but myself. I suspect the real test will come
when an application tries to save a photo in My Pictures and the OS is
presented with the decision of whether to save it in the renamed folder (Pic
Bin), or create a new My Pictures, like it has 10,000 times before.

By the way, after Windows 2000 Pro locks me out of my computer I plan to
visit the movie studios and then sue Microsoft. This concept is an obvious
theft of intellectual property from Clark/Kubrick's Hal 9000 in "2001", and
if this information is not in the public domain they are in big trouble.

Gary S. Terhune wrote:
Actually, at this moment I'm posting from a Win98 machine. I just
don't feel like doing your experimentation for you, eg.

My previous response was alluding to the strange way the whole
"personal environment" paradigm developed over the various editions
of Windows, and the fact that the NT-based versions implement them
rather differently than the 9x versions did, even though their
function seems the same.

Really, you shouldn't have any problems from those hacks you're
contemplating. Not of the system-killing type. For safety, export
each key you intend to change before changing it. Then restoring is a
simple matter of merging a REG file. I don't think they're likely to
be a problem so much as I suspect that you won't fully achieve your
goals with only those specific entries. All depends on which app is
trying to use the environmental variables to determine Open/Save
locations. Some or most will probably read the very entries you're
talking about, but I suspect that some will drill down via more
circuitous routes, and the pointers may not all lead to the desired
location.

BTW, in case you didn't realize it, those entries in HKCU and HKU are
the same entries. Change one set and the other will already be
changed by the time you get to it. They're just two different
representations of the same database.


"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
Gary S. Terhune wrote:
Do let us know when you find out, eg.

That sounds like that Stevie Wonder line in Livin' for the City
where he says something like "Hey Kid, wanna make five bucks? Take
this bag across the street..."

I suppose I could do it without too much trouble, provided the boot
sequence, if I'm lucky enough to still have one, allowed me to reach
GoBack.

By the way, and for the record, the registry path to My Documents
from HKEY_User and _Current User is
Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders,
and I share your suspicion that this one of those deeply enmeshed
items that wasn't thrown in at 3:00 a.m. the week before final
release.

I'll leave it the way it is. Might even reinstall Clippy from the
disk while I'm at it.

There is no question now that, as you've consistently maintained in
this newsgroup, Windows 98 is obsolete. I know this because you're
posting your answers referencing XP, so that the unwashed masses are
out of luck, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy! But I'm ahead
of the curve. Just bought a nice clean, legal 2000PRO disc on eBay.


I don't know about Win98, but in XP the whole "My..." folder
structure is a subset of the "Personal" environment, aka My
Documents, which is itself a subset of "Documents & Settings". While
I haven't played with it much, other than to move my own My
Documents to a different partition (something I always do) it would
seem that
the My ... sub-folders tend to tag along with the whole environment.
IOW, I suspect more than just those four entries you mention are
involved.


"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
Since I don't like being talked down to if I can avoid it, I've
always resented having to deal with the self-replicating,
unkillable "My Pictures" in Windows Explorer. While it doesn't
sink to the
level of Clippy, it's also a lot harder to get rid of.

Some programs with a graphical component, such as Picassa and Canon
Scanner software, default to this folder for saving, but that can
be modified by the user.

I just did a thorough registry search - keys, values, data - for
"My Pictures" and it came up twice as two values plus one data
within
each of the two value entries. If I change the folder name in
Explorer and then change all four of these registry notations to
reflect the new name, am I stepping out into the clearing or into
the deep doo-doo?

"Roger Fink" wrote in message
...
"This smacks of an insalubrious deed" (Lenny Bruce).
And MacBeth said something similar, as I recall.

Indeed, LOL!

Good work. Now to await its fruits.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User