DigitalVolcano Software Support

I have a Windows 7 migrated from Windows Vista.
The migration created a Windows.old folder containing a copy of all previous user data.

I ran Duplicate Cleaner on C:\Users and C:\Windows.old\ to get rid of the duplicates.

Fact = For some reason, the C:\Windows.old contains a symbolic link "Documents and settings" which links to C:\Users

Duplicate Cleaner follows the symbolic and mark all C:\Windows.old\Documents and settings files as dupes from C:\Users, whereas they are in fact the same file !

I tag them for deletion, delete them, empty the trash.

Then to realize ALL MY C:\Users files ARE GONE !!!!

I've never really fully understood that, never been comfortable with that, always been wary of that, have long suspected, & have seen squirrelly stuff like that happen.

Why MS would even do something like that is beyond me.
And note that it is not just on migrations from Vista to Win7, but anytime Windows.old gets created; so like if you installed Windows a second time (a second instance, as opposed to overwriting the existing).

And it won't only be this application, but potentially any application you use where you could run into this situation.
I find it terribly annoying, & unsafe, to be browsing a particular directory tree in my file manager, look up & see & realize, oh crap!, how did I get here?!
Totally a place I did not want to be in, was specifically wanting to avoid.

IMO the only "safe" way to deal with Windows.old is to simply leave it there.
Which sucks.
I believe MS's method of handling it, which I suppose works, is to use "Desktop Cleanup".

How to Delete the Windows.old Folder in Windows 7

Gives me shivers.
Especially considering no matter how you go about doing it, you won't really know what will happen - until you've done it.
So that means that in order to be safe, you have to have backups made - ahead of time.
And that sucks too, especially on a single machine, single drive update, cause you're not likely to have sufficient disk space - elsewhere, if at all, to cover what might potentially go wrong. (Less of an issue if you have multiple machines, connected across a LAN, with bookoo external storage available...)

This shouldn't have happened if you had 'Don't follow NTFS mount points and junctions' checked. Did you uncheck this? ( on by default). If not I'll have to run some tests!

DigitalVolcano wrote:Did you uncheck this?

I don't remember unchecking this stuff. So I believe DC has followed "C:\Windows.old\Documents and setting" when it shouldn't have.
But the key point is that Duplicate Cleaner believed they where different files and presented them as duplicates, whereas they were in fact the same files.

I see there are two other options
...Count Hardlinks in files
...Exclude Hard Linked files from Duplicate List

What does they mean ?

Count.
Well the count is simply that, a count, the number of hardlinks a file contains.
Any file in the results list that shows a Hard Links > 0 is a hardlink.
(Or any file that shows Hard Links = 0 is not.)

Exclude.
When scanning, a hardlinked file is excluded from the Duplicate Files list, they will not shown.
(Likewise, if Exclude is enabled, the Duplicate Files list will not contain a Hard Links column.)



Or from the book:

Count Hardlinks in File check

The number of hardlinks each file contains will be counted and shown in the list.
Hardlinks are a way of having a single file show in multiple places on a hard drive.

Exclude Hard Linked files from Duplicate List check

Any hardlinked files are excluded from the duplicate check

are the links
Documents and Settings
and
Application Data
hardlinks ?

They appear in every Vista Users folders.