Can I point to the same “Documents” folder in a dual-boot system?

I have Vista and XP on my machine. I went into Vista and changed the target location for the “Documents” folder to point to another folder in a different location. When this happened, the other folder was automatically renamed to “Documents”.

I booted into XP and I wanted to change the “My Documents” folder to point as well to this other folder.

However, XP just created a new folder called My Documents in that location.

Basically what I want to do is to be able to click on “My Documents” in XP and click on “Documents” in Vista and have the same folder open where all my files are stored.

Is this possible? And if yes, would you be able to tell me how it’s done and why the method I’m using is not working?

As well, if this works I might do this for some of my other folders too.

Thanks for the help.

Configuration of the My Documents Folder
Article ID : 221837
Last Review : November 21, 2003
Revision : 1.0
This article was previously published under Q221837
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SUMMARY
MORE INFORMATION

SUMMARY
The My Documents folder is a component of the user profile that is used as a unified location for storing personal data. By default, the My Documents folder is a folder in the user's profile that is used as a default storage location for saved documents.

Optionally, an administrator can use folder redirection in a group policy to modify the location of My Documents to reside on a network share. When users save documents to the My Documents folder, the files are actually saved on an assigned network location and can be backed up by the administrator.
MORE INFORMATION
The path to the My Documents folder is stored in the following registry key, where path is the complete path to your storage location:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

Value Name: Personal
Value Type: REG_SZ
Value Data: path
Any modification from the default is recorded in the following location and the path listed earlier is also updated:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Value Name: Personal
Value Type: REG_SZ
Value Data: path
If the administrator redirects My Documents by using group policy folder redirection, the path is present in this value and the option to modify the location of the My Documents folder is not available when you view properties of the My Documents folder.


How to Change the My Documents Folder Storage Location
When the properties of the My Documents folder (the desktop icon) are displayed and a group policy has not been established to redirect the folder, you can change the path to the My Documents folder and you can move the contents from the old location to the new location: 1. Right-click My Documents (on the desktop), and then click Properties.
2. In the Target box, type the new path to the My Documents folder, or click Move to browse to the folder and if needed, create a new My Documents folder. If the path you type does not exist, you are prompted to confirm creating a new folder.
3. Click Yes to move files from the old My Documents location to the new location, or click No if you do not want to move these files. Note that clicking No does not delete the files in the old location, but means they are no longer visible from My Documents after the change.

Restoring the Default My Documents Path
If the current My Documents path is incorrect or is no longer available, the Restore Default option may be used to restore the default path.

NOTE: This option is not displayed when group policy folder redirection is in effect for this folder. 1. Right-click My Documents (on the desktop), and then click Properties.
2. Click Restore Default. The restore operation uses the following registry value (where user ID is the appropriate user ID) to determine the default location based on the user's profile and appends "\My Documents" to form a complete path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\user ID

Value Name: ProfileImagePath
Value Type: REG_EXPAND_SZ

Thanks for the article Pat. I talked with a Network Administrator here at work and he mentioned that what I want to do may NOT be possible because of how Vista assigns user access privileges. Howver, I'll look into your article a bit more and see.

Im not positive that it will work with Vista but I cant see why it wouldnt.

In the control panel you can turn off UAC (user access control) for a minute and do this . Unfortunatly you must reboot, then do your task and then turn it on again and reboot again.

I know its a pain but UAC does offer a bit more protection for people like myself who tends to run in administrator rather than a user configuration.