Special folders are folders used of Windows to store the personal data of windows users. These folders are: My Pictures, My Documents, Favorites folders, Desktop etc. Redirection of those folders can be useful if you like to free more drive space of you system disc drive. To do that you have two solutions with redirecting Special folders:

First - to move/redirect folders to different drive, or
Second - to move/redirect folders to other computer/server in the network (useful if you like to access Special Folder from anywhere in network).

Windows XP create and store paths of special folders after installation into registry. Simple Registry modification will do the redirection job.

Changing path to another drive location
To change the Special folder path to another driver location:

1. Open the Registry Editor (Run -> regedit)
2. Find this key “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders”. This is the key where Windows XP stores the location of per-user special folders.
3. Change the path for the folder that you want to have on some other drive or path.

Ex: if you want the My Documents folder of all the users to be on “D:\All Users\”. Simply change the path of the Personal to “D:\All Users\%USERNAME%\ My Documents “. Reboot windows, and the document’s path for all of the users will be D:\All Users\UserName\My Documents where ‘UserName’ is the name of the user.

Changing path to a Network Location

1. Open the Registry Editor (Run -> regedit)
2. Find this key “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders”.
3. Change the path to “\\Server\All Users\%USERNAME%\My Documents”. “Server” is the name of the computer in network (you can use also IP address), and the “All Users” is the folder where you want to place the documents.

Tags | Howto, Installation, Networking, Tips and Tricks, Windows XP