VHD mounted drives and <LNK> directories

[Blight]

Hi,
When mounting a VHD drive image created using windows 7's 'Backup & Restore' using Windows 7 'disk management' tool, it's impossible to navigate <LNK> folders.

For example, if the mounted drive resides on "I:\", navigating to "I:\Users\Blight\My Documents", opens up "C:\Users\Blight\My Documents".

This is not the case when navigating through explorer.

My concern about this bug is the potential for erasing the wrong files by accident.

[HolgerK]

Related problem:Accessing remote server junctions/hardlinks(meanwhile fixed)

BTW:

opens up "C:\Users\Blight\My Documents"

Isn't it "C:\Users\Blight\Documents"?

BTW2:
There must be a reason for
"Configuration->Options->Display: [x] show hidden/system files(for experts only!)"

Regards
Holger

[ghisler(Author)]

Unfortunately paths are stored with absolute locations in LNK files, so the drive C is hard coded. Unfortunately Total Commander cannot know whether such a hard-coded link is wrong or not. It seems that the Explorer makes some assumptions because the user mounts the drive within Explorer.

[Blight]

ghisler:
Then you may want to add these assumptions to TC.
Otherwise TC can cause massive systemic data loss if a user decides to delete a directory containing such links.

[MVV]

Blight, when you delete folder with links, NO DATA BEHIND LINKS is deleted, just link is removed.

Also, there may be simply no way to ask Explorer about such assumptions.

[ghisler(Author)]

Also, there may be simply no way to ask Explorer about such assumptions.

So far I didn't find any. Also users may actually WANT to have hard links to other drives or sub-trees. For example, I have such a link to move some large files from drive C: (small SSD) to drive F: (Terabyte harddisk) and let Windows still assume that it's on drive C:.

[HolgerK]

Also, there may be simply no way to ask Explorer about such assumptions.

So far I didn't find any. Also users may actually WANT to have hard links to other drives or sub-trees. For example, I have such a link to move some large files from drive C: (small SSD) to drive F: (Terabyte harddisk) and let Windows still assume that it's on drive C:.

See

By default, a junction point has the following settings after you upgrade Windows XP to Windows Vista:

The attribute of a junction point is hidden.
The Read permission of a junction point is Deny.

My windows 7 installation was a clean installation (no update) but shows the same access rights

Code: Select all

C:\Users\USERNAME>CACLS "My Documents"
C:\Users\USERNAME\My Documents Everyone:(DENY)(special access:)
                                      FILE_READ_DATA]

                             NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(OI)(CI)(ID)F
                             BUILTIN\Administrators:(OI)(CI)(ID)F
                             COMPUTERNAME\USERNAME:(OI)(CI)(ID)F

So this seems to be generally true for the XP compatibilty links in Vista and Windows 7.

I guess a link created by the user neither has the hidden/system attribute nor this special permission for Everyone.
On the other side: some (TC) users are used to use the XP compatibility links, to navigate to some places.
Maybe it's a good idea to detect whether the link location is on the same drive as the link target.

By the way: it would be nice to have an option to hide this kind of compatibility junctions separately from "show system/hidden files" option.
Currently I'm using the ignore list here to get a clearer look to the file system structure.

Regards
Holger

[MVV]

HolgerK, many users edit permissions of that symlinks, so it is a bad idea to detect them in such way.

[HolgerK]

The question was not what many users are doing against the (security) concepts of windows (someone may enter format c:\ as well) but how explorer prevents the normal user to harm his local data.

Regards
Holger

[MVV]

I think it uses constant list of links (it knows 'em all), but it is a question where it holds information about volumes.

[HolgerK]

I doubt this, because the names of the links are different for each language version of the Windows setup.

Regards
Holger