Vista nightmare
All right, perhaps “nightmare” is too strong a word. For the most part, Windows Vista has been working just fine for me. But the other day I ran into one of the oddest problems I’ve ever had with a modern operating system.
I’ve run into odd problems before, and gone hunting online for some obscure fix, but that was always after doing something odd — after tweaking the wrong thing, or otherwise messing around the way a typical user would not.
In this case, though, I did nothing of the sort. Instead, I ran into an odd “feature” of Vista’s that caused me quite a headache.
I was playing around with a few different pieces of backup software, including Karen’s Replicator and Microsoft’s own SyncBack.
I was trying to backup my Vista user’s directory (C:\users\AK) to a second hard drive. I kept getting an odd error about a path being too long.
When I examined the log, I found that both pieces of software (as well as some others I tried) were trying to back up a folder with a path: C:\users\AK\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\ … and so on, ad infinitum.
Huh?
I Googled the phrase “Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\” and found the answer. At first I thought it was a problem with either my antivirus software or my anti-spyware software. It was neither.
It was a problem with Vista.
Previous version of Windows used a folder to store various settings for applications: C:\Users\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data. But Vista uses C:\users\<user>\AppData.
To make sure old programs can find the new folder, Microsoft added “junctions” — these are hidden files that redirect programs that try to access the old “Application Data” path; the junction sends the program to “AppData.”
But somehow I had run into an infinite loop. The backup packages were trying to back up the Application Data folder, and where redirected to the AppData folder. But somehow, in the AppData folder, there was some reference to Application Data.
So the software looped and looped forever.
Good going there, Microsoft.
I searched for a solution and found that there were a handful of obscure (and thankfully, free) programs for dealing with junctions. I tried two; one didn’t work, but I was able to get the second one to fix the problem, although I was warned that only an expert should even look at that kind of software because I was screwing with things I shouldn’t screw with.
I screwed, and everything worked.
Almost. I looked at my backup drive. The folder structure there was C:\Users\AK\Local Settings \Application Data \Application Data \Application Data \Application Data… and so on, many, many levels deep.
So deep, in fact, that I couldn’t get to the bottom! Instead, realizing that this was just a backup drive, I formatted it and re-ran the backup software. No problems.
I’m used to dealing with my computer like a car geek might deal with a ‘69 Camaro; I tinker and I suffer the consequences. But in this case I tinkered not, but I ran into the kind of problem that I doubt anyone who didn’t have a lot of experience could get out of.
Emily says:
How are “junctions” different from aliases and why would there have to be any special way to deal with them?