Windows 10: Why is my new laptop choosing OneDrive for its preferred file locations?

I have a brand new laptop and I've noticed that the preferred locations for all Pictures, Documents, Desktop, Music, and Video files, are effectively shortcuts to my OneDrive Personal Files. This confuses me, because with my tower-and-monitor PC there is a genuine and clear distinction between localized files and ones saved to my OneDrive-Personal cloud profile. Why does my laptop do this? Is this because of an updated Operating System preference from Windows 10 to 11? Is it because of some startup setting that I didn't understand? If I were to go into File Explorer on my W11 Laptop and atte

:)

 

Why is my new laptop choosing OneDrive for its preferred file locations?

I have a brand new laptop and I've noticed that the preferred locations for all Pictures, Documents, Desktop, Music, and Video files, are effectively shortcuts to my OneDrive Personal Files. This confuses me, because with my tower-and-monitor PC there is a genuine and clear distinction between localized files and ones saved to my OneDrive-Personal cloud profile. Why does my laptop do this? Is this because of an updated Operating System preference (from Windows 10 to 11)? Is it because of some startup setting that I didn't understand?

If I were to go into File Explorer on my W11 Laptop and attempt to mimic the organization of my W10 Desktop (primarily for that immediate recognizable difference between Cloud and Local file saving) what would be the best way to go about that? Any videos y'all can recommend? Thanks

 

Why is my new laptop choosing OneDrive for its preferred file locations?

Hi John,

I am Dave, I will help you with this.

In All modern versions of Windows 10 and 11, by default the Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders are located in the OneDrive folder, the other user library folders like Music, Videos, Downloads...etc. are not, they are located in your user folder in C:\Users.

That is the default configuration.

To change that is a lot of work and required a good bit of Registry editing.

You would first need to ensure there are folders named Documents, Desktop and Pictures in your user folder in C:\Users, then you would need to edit the registry to change the default locations from the OneDrive folder into those folders in your user folder.

Click your Start Button, type regedit and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.

Click View and make sure 'Address Bar' is turned on.

Paste this into the Address Bar at the top and hit Enter.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Please provide a screenshot of that Registry Editor page.

 

Onedrive didn't move my files to the new hdd location

Hi Randall Messing,

You don't have to move the entire OneDrive folder from it's default location. You can instead create a new empty folder on your new HDD drive and name it
OneDrive. Then just copy the files inside the old OneDrive folder and paste them into the new
OneDrive folder. Then unlink your OneDrive from it's default location, click on
Change location and select the new location. Once you select the new
OneDrive folder you want to select "Use this location" not "Choose new location".





However, instead of trying to find files that may be missing consider this:

It is not necessary to copy all the files from the old location. Once you linkup OneDrive to it's new location, the files will begin to download from the OneDrive website. It may take a bit longer but if you feel that you messed up your local OneDrive
files you can just wait for the files to download from the website. Then you won't have to look for any "rogue" files and you can start with fresh downloaded files.

Feel free to get back here with any further questions and I'll try to help you out.