Windows 10: What exactly are are "My music", "My Pictures" and "My videos"

I should know this ! Maybe old age has gotten to me and not all of my synapses connect anymore.

I have been using Windows since XP and have touched every version, except 8. I spent many, many years on 7, but some how the actual implementation and purpose of theses folders under C:\Users\name\Documents escapes me.

Windows Explorer shows them as links, but if you try to access them you get "Access Denied". From CMD, DIR says there is nothing there.

:)

 

What exactly are are "My music", "My Pictures" and "My videos"

You can't redirect the shortcut links which is the subject of the post

 

What exactly are are "My music", "My Pictures" and "My videos"

The link has the following advice that, of course, does NOT work in Win10 !

Workaround

If the My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos links in the Start menu do not point to the Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders, you must manually redirect these links to the correct folders. To redirect these links, follow these steps:

1. Click Startthe Start button , right-click the link, and then click Properties.
2. On the Location tab, replace the wrong target location with the correct target location. For example, to redirect the My Music folder to the Music folder in Windows Vista, enter %systemdrive%\Users\user_name\Music.
3. Click Apply.

If this was a fix for Vista, it seems kind of sloppy to keep it around !

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If you CHECK THIS BOX they disappear.

 

Quick Access not searching Pictures folder


Summary, that last suggestion didn't work.

• I moved the pictures to another folder temporarily.

• Then I tried to remove the Pictures folder with option one at Add or Remove Folders from This PC in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials. Even after rebooting, the Pictures folder remained.
• So I tried using option two. Same thing: reboot >> Pictures folder still there.

• Since there were no troubleshooting steps for this scenario, just for the heck of it, I ran through the restore steps. Copied some pictures into the Pictures folder, ran a Quick Access search and initial problem remains: Searching all of QA doesn't find any files in Pictures folder, running search on just the Pictures folder does. I want to run a global search and find matching files in any/all of the Documents, Music, Videos, and Pictures folders.

That article dates from 2015 and I'm guessing is out of date. I hope it didn't create potential future problems in my registry.

Bottom line: I'm still looking for a fix.