Classic Shell: Forum

We use Classic Shell for our company and absolutely LOVE it. However there is one prob, we map our users "My Documents" folder to their home drive (H:) so everything they store in their My Documents is backed up on the network. When you select "My Documents" through the Classic Shell it looks like it's pointing to the local path of My Documents and not what Windows has set for the My Documents path. Does that make sense?

I think we can edit the UserDocumentsItem under Customize Start Menu but not sure what command to put in there or where to see a list of available commands. I think this is a bug because the command "user_documents" should look at the set Windows path for the users My Documents.

What version of Classic Shell are you using?

Btw how exactly do you map the My Documents folder? Do you use the Location tab from Properties or do you use Group Policy Folder Redirection?

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Yes, we right click on their My Documents and on the Location tab we enter the path of their H:\.

So, what version of Classic Shell are you using?

3.6.8

The start menu uses the system setting FOLDERID_Documents to get the location of the Documents folder. It should work even when the folder is moved. On my computer it is moved to "D:\MyData\Documents" and it works just fine.
Maybe there's an issue with using a network drive instead of a local path. I need to know the exact steps you have done to change the documents location.

The exact steps are this:

1) In Active Directory under user properties, we add a home folder path (H:) to be [url=file://\\server\homefolder\username\]\\server\homefolder\username\[/url]
2) After step #1 adds a mapped drive to each user (H:), then we manually right click on the My Documents folder, select properties, and under Location tab set it to "H:\Documents".

After we do this, the Documents for the user is the same as their mapped H: drive (their home folder). It works in all regards in Windows, but Classic Shell seems to still be looking at their original local path of their My Documents (C:\Users\Documents\).

Please download the attached Test.exe. Run it on one of the machines where the start menu shows the wrong path. For best results do it in a non-elevated command prompt.
The tool basically asks the system where it thinks the Documents folder is using the setting FOLDERID_Documents.
Report the output here.

Sorry I got busy today but I'll run it tomorrow and post the output. Thanks for the help.

Output produced two lines:

C:\Users\username\Documents
C:\Users\username\Documents

("username" is the name of my user of course)

Well, that's the path the OS considers to be the Documents folder. I don't know if it's because of the network path, or because Active Directory is involved, but this is it.
If you don't like it, then you'll have to modify the start menu settings and manually add your custom Documents folder to the menu.
Also, by default the Windows 7 style in version 3.9.0 and up use the Documents library. So if you upgrade things will change. Don't know if for the worse or for the better.

No worries. I saw how we could edit the item manually but I couldn't figure out how to keep the same icon. Any ideas?

By default if you use the Link property the icon should come from the shell. If you are still not getting the correct Documents icon you can set Icon to "imageres.dll,1002"

Check two registry paths:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders, value "Personal" and
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders, value "Personal".

They should point to H:\

If not, the reason Test.zip outputs "C:\Users\username\Documents" is obvious.

PS. I'm changing this manually in logon script, even not using folder redirection group policy (as suggested by MS)

First try to use folder redirection and see whether this works for You. Don't do "manual clicks".

Classic Shell 4.0.4 introduces Group Policy support for all of its settings. Amongst those are new Group Policies to control menu redirection, independent of the OS settings. Extract the ADML and ADMX files from C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\PolicyDefinitions.zip to C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions folder (for Local Group Policy). If you have Active Directory domain, extract the files to %logonserver%\sysvol\%userdnsdomain%\policies\PolicyDefinitions\. The 4 policies to redirect the menu are:

- Start Menu folder
- Programs folder
- Common Programs folder
- Common Start Menu folder

You must exit the Start menu by right clicking the Start button or by running "C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\ClassicStartMenu.exe" -exit and then start it again from "C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\ClassicStartMenu.exe".

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.