Games - My Documents

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On Microsoft Windows operating systems, My Documents is the name of a special folder on the the computer's hard drive that is commonly used to store a user's documents, music, pictures, downloads, and other files.

Overview

The term "My Documents" was first introduced in the Windows 98 operating system, as part of an effort to improve the sense of personal connection between the computer and its user. The folder, located at the root of the hard drive that Windows is installed on, was displayed directly on the user's desktop, making it easy for a user to find their files at any given time.

In Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the My Documents folder is located in the user's profile directory. By default, this is "Documents and Settings\\My Documents" on the same hard drive that Windows is installed on. It is important to note that "My Documents" in these operating systems is one of a number of Special Folders, which is a concept introduced in Windows 2000 to add a layer of abstraction between the user interface's presentation of the folder, and its physical location and contents. As such, "My Documents" in file load/save dialogs (and in Windows Explorer) doesn't appear as an absolute path. A user can change the physical location of My Documents by right-clicking on the My Documents icon, choosing properties, and choosing a new path in the Target tab.

In Windows Vista, My Documents has been renamed to simply, "Documents". My Music and My Pictures have also lost their prefix, and the folders themselves have moved to the user profile's root directory.

Other "My" folders

In Windows XP, two additional special folders with a "My" prefix were introduced: "My Music" and "My Pictures". As with My Documents, these folders can be pointed elsewhere than their default location (on a separate hard drive, for example), but unlike My Documents, this cannot be changed via the user interface. Microsoft's TweakUI can do this.

My Music and My Pictures are not present in Windows Server 2003.

When Windows Media Player 9 or 10 is installed on Windows XP, a "My Videos" folder is also added, which is used by Windows Media Player to store video files that are shown in its media library.

Many other applications have adopted the "My" naming convention when placing folders in the user's My Documents directory.

Windows Messenger
and MSN Messenger
create a "My Received Files" folder when they are used for the first time.
"My Games" is becoming an increasingly common place for games (especially those published by Microsoft Game Studios
) to store a player's saved game and settings files. This makes it easier for a user to keep their saved games if they uninstall a game, and if they eventually migrate their files to a newer computer (using the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, for example).

Group Policy

On Windows machines that are part of a Windows Server domain, the location of My Documents (and other Special Folders) can be configured through Group Policy settings. One common configuration used in corporate desktop deployments, is to redirect My Documents to a folder on a file server.

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