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  1. C:
  2. Documents and Settings
FolderRisk: Do not touch
  • Hidden
  • Access denied
  • Legacy from XP

Documents and Settings C:\Documents and Settings

Compatibility junction to C:\Users inherited from Windows XP. Do not delete it: older applications still rely on it.

Updated on By AltF4 Formation

What it’s for

On Windows XP, user profiles lived in Documents and Settings. Since Windows Vista they are in C:\Users, and Windows leaves a redirection at the old location for applications that still use the old path. It is a junction (reparse point) to C:\Users, not a real data folder.

What it contains

  • No files of its own: the junction points to C:\Users, so to the same data.
  • It is hidden and flagged as a system folder.
  • Listing it is denied, even to an administrator. Only access by full path (for example C:\Documents and Settings\<user>) works for the applications that need it.

Risks and best practices

  • Leave the junction and its permissions as they are: legacy programs and some scripts still rely on it.
  • Exclude junctions from backups and recursive copies. Following Documents and Settings copies the same data twice, or even loops.
  • An “Access denied” on this folder is normal and does not indicate a security problem.
  • In a script that walks the disk, skip reparse points (the ReparsePoint attribute).

Useful commands

Fenêtre de terminal
# Identify the junction and its target (read-only)
Get-Item 'C:\Documents and Settings' -Force | Select-Object FullName, Attributes, LinkType, Target
Fenêtre de terminal
:: List the junctions and links at the root
dir C:\ /AL


:: Reparse point details
fsutil reparsepoint query "C:\Documents and Settings"

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