Never Ending System Paths

This is Windows 7 and this was definitely not my idea!!!
What gives with the never ending file paths?? i.e.

C:\Users\User name\AppData\Local\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Microsoft.

Reminds me of standing between two mirrors!!

Does the final folder have any data in it? It sounds like there's a bit of software that got carried away and perhaps has a bug in it when using the application data folder. I did some googling and found a few other examples of this, but not a mention of any particular software.

Hi Ian,
Yes, it looks exactly the same as the folder at C:\Users\User name\AppData\Local\Application Data\Microsoft!



I get the impression I could quite happily click on the highlighted folder all day and just go deeper and deeper into the bowels of my PC.
('ere, wot's wiv that eSupport.com??? Answer:- Driver Genius, defunct, delete.)

Good place to hide stuff.

It's caused by "Libraries", basically it's just a pointer and if the pointer points back to the current folder it allows for recursion. Basically every time you click into that pointer you are right back where you started but you can't really hide anything there as any file you create will simply be visible in every iteration.

It's not limited to pointing to itself either, you can actually set up a pointer to point to a parent folder like a->b->c->d->b->c->d->b->c->forever... This is also what can screw up backups, as a recursive pointer can cause the backup utility to recurse folders until it explodes or runs out of space (I mean file a\b\c\xyz.123 must be different than a\b\c\b\c\xyz.123 right, so I'll back it up too ???).

If you show all hidden/system files and expand your C: drive you will see "C:\Documents and Settings" and you will also see "C:\Users" and they are actually the same folder, so not only can you have pointers that recurse back up their tree but you can name the pointers differently and it still functions as the same folder.

Since the new OS is supposed to have something to handle extended filenames (it used to be that it would chop off once the name was longer than ??? some length, like 255 chars maybe) it might be able to continue forever.

Interesting, mine doesn't do that at all.

The ways of Windows, grasshopper, are truly mysterious!!

Yes, at times it can be mysterious! Oh young Padawan!

Mine doesn't do it any more but I've tweaked so many things, including deleting at least 3 pointers (music, videos, and pictures are no longer "under" my documents because they were just recursive pointers to my music, my videos, and my pictures which are really at the same tree branch as my documents) that now I don't know what got rid of "application data", but I no longer have that pointer. I do recall it doing that to me early on though.

I know I run with UAC set to 0 / disabled and I have run the TakeOwnership script on all those folders so I could have physically deleted it or run tweak that did it for me.

+1 Every word you said is exactly the same thing here.