Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>>> Home, yeah. But.. You don't want to do this "before" you install some
>>> things, or they break (and yeah, yeah, they don't follow spec, blah,
>>> blah.. But geeze...), and somehow I doubt that it moved "everything",
>>> not just the documents.
> 
> Since 2k Windows has supported mounting partitions to directories. It
> doesn't come up on the normal installation, but wouldn't it be possible
> to just mount another partition to C:\Documents and settings or
> C:\Users? Of course using both styles makes it more complicated to
> think, but I don't see why it wouldn't work just like mounting another
> partition to /home in Linux.
> 
Well.. Windows XP and Vista basically mount a "directory" called "My 
Documents", which can be pretty much any place. In the "default" state 
its usually something like "C:\Documents and Settings\Patrick\My 
Documents". This "Can be" changed, but doing so is a bit... obscure, and 
it **won't** move the folder contents that are already there. Worse, 
just to make things sillier, when you "do" change it, unless you have 
"full" rights on the machine (or even if you do, if you are using some 
"other" application to copy things, not just the inbuilt stuff), you 
lose the rights to access the files, as soon as you move the location, 
so, you can't then fix it.

Basically, its way more complicated than it needed to be, and doesn't do 
some of the things you "might" presume makes some sort of sense, like 
taking "existing" documents, belonging to that user, and moving them 
too, not just the "mount point"...

Now, where this gets fun is if you have something that asked the OS 
where to "install" documents and settings, then stored that, but never 
double checks to see if its "still" the same place. I.e., its not a true 
mount, which would also move not just the symbolic lookup, but the 
"logical" location of the files, such that accessing "My Documents" 
would "still" give you the right thing, so.. unless it presents what 
"should be", based on what it "appears" to be doing, a redundant call to 
"what is Patrick's document folder", ever time it tries to access, it 
instead uses the "prior" location, which is no not only invalid, but 
unprivileged, which leads to all sorts of whining by the application 
that it can't open the files.

Of course, one of the odder "glitches" this presented was a case where 
save games where somehow marked as "temp" in the mess of the file 
system, under this design, such that, "clearing temporary files", also 
somehow wiped all the save games... I still haven't worked out how that 
happened..

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message