Vista Anomaly (not a lost doom level)

Too often this happens in Vista: I save a file that I created, be it a document, a doom wad, or most recently, a .wav file. I then go into the folder where I saved it and it's not there. And yet, I can go into the program where I made the file and saved it to my HD, go to Open, and select the file in the folder where I saved it, and it's there. But if I go into the folder using windows exploder I will not be able to find the file. But it gets even better. If I go to Open in the program and locate the file and try to COPY the file, windoze will tell me the file is not there and therefore cannot copy it! But if I click open and open the file in the program, it opens and is most certainly there!! This just happened in Audacity. It's amazing, really... This shit happens to me all the time when I save doom files. The file just will not show up in the folder. Totally irritating and baffling.

Where exactly are you saving the files?

This'd be Vista's "folder virtualization" in action. Basically, if you're not running your program with Administrator rights, Vista will act as if it's saving the file where you asked it to, but it'll really be dumping it somewhere entirely different.

You can solve this issue by giving your account Admin status, or just remembering to right-click and run every program as Admin. Personally, though, I went the whole way and not only gave myself Admin status off the bat, but also disabled User Account Control. (I'm actually running Windows 7, but as far as I can tell it's pretty much the same.)

Even admin rights won't fix the problem. Save somewhere other than in the system-specific directories (Program Files, etc.) and you should be OK. I encountered this while making some ringtones for my phone with Audacity and got extremely frustrated not being able to find my files even though they appeared to be RIGHT THERE. I do have admin rights with this account too.

Saved them in My Documents, though, and didn't have any problems.

I have the problem in my DOOM folder C:\DOOM amazing.. What was wrong with Windows 98?? I honestly don't remember. Wasn't the most stable thing in the world...so what? you restarted on a regular basis, at least it worked. Working with an operating system broken at such a fundamental level is ridiculous.

Any folder with files in VirtualStore will have a "Compatibly Files" button in the toolbar which will take you directly to those files.

Actually, any CS or IT specialist worth his salt will tell you that an OS without absolute writing freedom (or rather, wish sensible access restrictions and protection) is a Good Thing.

Compare it to all flavours of UNIX where saving in the filesystem's root folder or in protected \bin folders was inadmissible by definition, except for the superuser. Writing in system directories by a user program? NO FUCKING WAY. NOWAI. NO. NADA.

Of course, applications were also designed to match these specs, and the intended audience for those OSes also knew better.

Now, if 30 years of MS-DOS and Windows legacy have made writing in \, in DOS\, in WINDOWS\, in %rootfolder%\SYSTEM and SYSTEM32 standard procedure....well that's just the Wrong Thing. Of course a Wrong Thing that's been around for 30 years can't be dismissed in a couple of days.

It may be The Wrong Thing, but Microsoft's solution is garbage. Why even pretend you can save files somewhere? Just let the user know you're faking it!

WildWeasel said:

You can solve this issue by giving your account Admin status, or just remembering to right-click and run every program as Admin.

Or, and that's my favorite method, by not putting your games in C:\Program Files. Especially not things like ports.

Who puts anything that they remotely want to keep safe on the same drive as windows nowadays? I keep all my games, documents, files, etc on a seperate drive.

This is something that has been getting worse and worse since Win95. I really dislike my OS making up pretend folders and obfuscating where the files actually are. I don't need that.

I want to put my files in the folders I select and I want the folders that I select to actually be what they appear to be, not some cryptically named folder nested three layers inside a hidden folder and merely pretending to be where I thought it was.