Windows 7 Ultimate, and also presumable Vista, has BLACK HOLES where data disappears over the Event Horizon.
Just as in Sci-Fi, behind every blackhole is a wormhole leading to another universe/dimension etc.,
so Windows 7 etc has blackholes which are called Junctions or Reparse Points that lead to somewhere else.
Some of these reparse points are bidirectional - what you deposit you can retrieve.
Others are write (exit) only, and you have to look somewhere else to find them.
Write only holes allow you to write, but prevent you from reading or even deleting.
If you can write then you can OVER-WRITE which destroys what was there,
so SECURE deletion will overwrite and destroy what a simple delete cannot harm.
I ran under XP Junction Link Magic from www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm
It shows under drive M:\ (XP name for dual-boot W7)
m:\Users\Alan\My Documents\ C:\Users\Alan\Documents
I have 44 such junctions in W7, and they seem to appear when you use an XP path such as "My Documents"
I do not trust black holes.
I suspect you have 88 blackholes, 44 of them in your "Windows Old" subfolder.
I also suspect that regardless of the natural consequences of the original 44 blackholes,
when you try to delete part of the legacy of the "Old", the junctions within may still point at the music etc. where it PREVIOUSLY existed, and not to the recent "OLD" subfolder.
If you run CMD.EXE and paste this sequence will show if you have a blackhole problem
echo %TIME% > "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"\ALAN_LOST
DEL "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"\ALAN_LOST
echo %TIME% > "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_KEPT
echo %TIME% >> "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"\ALAN_LOST
TYPE "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"\ALAN_LOST
TYPE "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_KEPT
TYPE "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_LOST
DEL "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_KEPT
DEL "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_LOST
N.B. "DEL "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_LOST" should be followed by a blank line,
or you have to hit the ENTER
This creates a ALAN_LOST but is unable to find it or delete it
Then it creates ALAN_KEPT and appends a time stamp to ALAN_LOST
It is unable to type ALAN_LOST via the blackhole route
but it can type ALAN_LOST when I use the %APPDATA% route.
The time stamps tell it all.
The last two commands clean up the test files.
It is not my ego which names my tests ALAN_KEEP etc.
but experience that scripts go wrong whilst I am debugging,
and I can rapidly search my whole system and instantly find everything that "got away from me".
I have attached what I see with Windows 7
Regards
Alan
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