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I have a very old application which I've moved from computer to computer over the years. I was probably running NT or maybe even Windows 95 when I got it. It still runs fine, but I recently tried to back up some of the files I created using it and I find that they are hidden. When I run the app I can read them or write them, but when I try to access them either via the command line or Windows Explorer they are not found. I can see them from the cygwin command line, but I would really prefer explorer.

My theory is that this is because my app is so old that it is putting user data in c:\ProgramFiles(x86)\MyApp\data rather than in some User\AppData directory which is what more recent versions of Windows are happier with.

What I've tried:

  • Using attrib to remove hidden attributes (failed with permission issue)
  • Same, but running attrib in cmd window with admin privileges (no permission error message, but the files do not subsequently show up)
  • Copying using cygwin command line (got unhelpful message "omitting directory `data'")

Any suggestions what I could try next? I am running Windows 7.

I would happy with a fix that I could do once and would fix it for good (setting permissions somehow?); I would be satisfied with a workaround like "run the following command every time you want to back files up").

Edit: I noticed something strange which may be a clue for someone more knowledgeable than I am: for files which have been modified recently, as opposed to created, doing a dir shows the file information for the old version, even though cygwin shows the new information and that's what I see when I read the file using the app.

Paul
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    Are you looking for this directory? `C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files` or try this one: `C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\VirtualStore\Program Files` – Barmak Shemirani May 13 '15 at 23:53
  • @Barmak No, my app is so old there's no way it would know about such newfangled things as AppData. – Paul May 13 '15 at 23:58
  • If the old application tries to write to protected directory, like c:\program files, then Windows will redirect to a different location, namely VirtualStore. Did you have a look at least? – Barmak Shemirani May 14 '15 at 00:24
  • @Barmak My apologies, I did not even conceive that such a thing as redirection was possible. You are quite right; the "missing" files are in VirtualStore. I am curious as to how I could see them with cygwin, but so far as my immediate problem goes, this solves the problem. Thank you very much, not just for solving my problem, but for teaching me about something I didn't know about. – Paul May 14 '15 at 00:58
  • A related question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18087991/cygwin-sees-a-file-that-windows-cant-i-want-to-access-this-file-from-python – Paul May 14 '15 at 01:38
  • Cygwin is a legacy application from the point of view of Windows (because it doesn't have a manifest declaring it compatible with Windows Vista) so it presents it with the legacy view of the disk. – Harry Johnston May 14 '15 at 04:12

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