Repair missing User folders in Windows 7

At some point, you’ll probably run into a problem that doesn’t seem to have an easy solution: one of your default User folders in Windows 7 (My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, My Videos, Downloads, and Desktop) will suddenly disappear.

Try as you might, you won’t be able to restore these user folders, because they are actually “special”. Windows treats them differently than a normal folder you might create yourself, and they even have pretty icons, like so:


There is a lot of info out there on how to fix these built-in Windows 7 folders, but it’s all rather complicated.

So, here’s the boiled-down, anybody-can-do-it version on how to restore your missing User folders – or so I hope!

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Move Your Docs, Music, Pics, & Vids to a Different Drive or Folder in Windows 7

Move FoldersLet’s say you’ve got Windows 7, and you install a second hard drive. Perhaps you have an SSD as your primary drive, and you want to store your GB’s of MP3s, videos, and documents on your second data drive.

Well, you could just copy the data into a new folder the old fashioned way. Doing this tends to break Windows 7’s “libraries” feature, and suddenly you have to tell Windows where to find all your files. That’s kind of annoying.

Fortunately, there is a built-in feature for moving your My Documents, My Music, My Videos, My Pictures, and even your Downloads folder automagically – and Windows will still keep track of everything for you!

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