Duplicate My Pictures folders and "missing" photos...

This is a mildly puzzling one.

A friend has WinXP (Compaq desktop, 2 years old or so), and all the shiniest AOHell software installed; she doesn't use it but thinks she needs it installed to keep her email address (AOL email but net access through Verizon).

I recently weaned her off of AOL mail and onto Thunderbird. All's well and good...until she tries to send pictures.

The last time I was at her place, I found that there are somehow two My Pictures folders on the drive, and they're nested (how did that happen?).

Thunderbird is looking in the top-level MP folder as it should be, and her camera is saving photos to the inner one (hence why new pics don't show up in the top-level--that sounds like there's something gone awry in the camera software prefs). I copied everything in the inner folder to the outer one (so both are identical--wouldn't matter which one was used), when I went to delete the inner My Pictures, she said no. Fair nuff sez I, both folders now have identical contents and I have confirmed that the folder that Thunderbird is looking in has everything.

Or not. I get an email yesterday saying that she still can't send pictures, that the folder that comes up when you select Attach isn't the one with her pictures in it (I haven't been able to determine exactly what she's trying to send--new, old, what the name of the folder is she wants). All her pic folders/photos have the default "IMG-ZZZ" names, so it's possible that she just doesn't know which pics are what (easily fixable).

I admit confuzzlement; not entirely sure what's up here. She won't let me remote in, so I can only fiddle with things when I'm at her house (which is rare).

Any thoughts (besides simply nuking the "inner" Pictures folder and seeing if that eliminates the confusion)?

Ah. People who refuse to learn how directories work. Or how to find things.

There really isn't much you can do here other then teach her how to navigate, since clearly Thunderbird isn't pointing at either of the locations by default right now.

It is pointing to the correct default folder, and I tested and confirmed multiple times that it is working. Eh, I'll show her step-by-step (again) and then rename all the photos to something more useful. Some things she picks up fairly quickly, others not so much (this particular "issue" has been going on for about a month -_- ).

Still wondering how that second nested folder showed up though...unless someone else created it and screwed up (which is entirely possible).

Dreamstalker said:

It is pointing to the correct default folder, and I tested and confirmed multiple times that it is working. Eh, I'll show her step-by-step (again) and then rename all the photos to something more useful. Some things she picks up fairly quickly, others not so much (this particular "issue" has been going on for about a month -_- ).

Still wondering how that second nested folder showed up though...unless someone else created it and screwed up (which is entirely possible).

Click to expand...

Hmm...perhaps the rogue picture downloading software decieded to remove duplicates?

Anyway, probably what happened was the camera software wanted to put pictures into \My Pictures, expecting to be pointed at My Documents. It ended up pointing at My Documents\My Pictures and went about sticking things into the nested subdirectory like a good little proggy