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#1
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
I post this every month or so to see if any new ideas or perspective.
There are 2 duplicate listings, each C:\Program Files\... The 1st behaves normally but the 2nd is just a mirror image of the 1st and it and nothing under it is accessable. Any changes to the 1st are immediately reflected in the identical mirror image 2nd. Would like to eliminate the 2nd mirror image. Ideas ? |
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#2
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
SteveGG wrote:
I post this every month or so to see if any new ideas or perspective. There are 2 duplicate listings, each C:\Program Files\... The 1st behaves normally but the 2nd is just a mirror image of the 1st and it and nothing under it is accessable. Any changes to the 1st are immediately reflected in the identical mirror image 2nd. Would like to eliminate the 2nd mirror image. Ideas ? Post a picture of this duplicate listing. http://postimage.org/index.php?um=flash Test the "forum link" you get back, in a second browser, to make sure it's viewable by everyone else. Paul |
#3
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
Thanks Paul.
I hadn't dealt with Post Image before. Very handy. I think this is the gallery etc. : https://postimg.org/gallery/iwnvo96e/ |
#4
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
SteveGG wrote:
Thanks Paul. I hadn't dealt with Post Image before. Very handy. I think this is the gallery etc. : https://postimg.org/gallery/iwnvo96e/ OK, when you open a Command Prompt window, cd \ dir do you see two "Program Files" there too ? Program Files Program Files Program Files (x86) I'm thinking the second one won't be there, when you use Command Prompt. The "dir" command doesn't have to behave like File Explorer, and File Explorer has a "much greater imagination". ******* I think a previous theory that got discussed, is there is *something* about the path of your Program Files which has an illegal character. Like, ends in a space or something. "Program Files " It's possible, if File Explorer runs into something illegal, it displays the illegal instance first (but nothing works in that folder), then it strips off the illegal character and tries again. And this might be what is giving two instances. ******* In an *administrator* command prompt, you can make an "icacls" listing of permissions. cd \ cd %userprofile% cd Downloads icacls c:\ /save Cdrive.txt /t /c CErr.txt 2&1 notepad Cdrive.txt I've reformatted the output in "Cdrive.txt" a bit here. This basically just shows permissions. The long strings of zeros are replaced by account numbers randomly generated for your install. If you have two computers in the same room, the machines may both have a "Steve" account, but those lists of numbers will be different on each C: drive. There's not really a lot of info here, so this is mainly to see if yours is grossly different somehow. (It might take a minute or two for icacls to list the entire partition above, so be patient when running the command.) If you save this file "for a rainy day", it can be used to repair the permissions to the same state as the day you made the file. When you do Properties on a file or folder, and use the Permissions tab, the names in the list shown should be the same order as the items in the icacls output. In the actual file, these occur as pairs of lines, file name first, permission line second. I have reformatted four lines from the file, to make it more readable (such as it is). SY stands for SYSTEM account. It's a shorthand notation... Program Files D:PAI(A;;FA;;; S-1-5-80-000000000-0000000000-0000000000-0000000000-0000000000) (A;CIIO;GA;;;S-1-5-80-000000000-0000000000-0000000000-0000000000-0000000000) (A;;0x1301bf;;;SY) (A;OICIIO;GA;;;SY) (A;;0x1301bf;;;BA) (A;OICIIO;GA;;;BA) (A;;0x1200a9;;;BU) (A;OICIIO;GXGR;;;BU) (A;OICIIO;GA;;;CO) Program Files (x86) D:PAI(A;;FA;;; S-1-5-80-000000000-0000000000-0000000000-0000000000-0000000000) (A;CIIO;GA;;;S-1-5-80-000000000-0000000000-0000000000-0000000000-0000000000) (A;;0x1301bf;;;SY) (A;OICIIO;GA;;;SY) (A;;0x1301bf;;;BA) (A;OICIIO;GA;;;BA) (A;;0x1200a9;;;BU) (A;OICIIO;GXGR;;;BU) (A;OICIIO;GA;;;CO) ******* Another tools you can run in your Administrator Command Prompt, is a third party tool "Everything.exe", which is a search tool. But it also happens to list the entire disk for you, when it makes the database files. http://www.voidtools.com/downloads/ http://www.voidtools.com/Everything-1.3.4.686.x64.zip Inside the ZIP file, is a single file "Everything.exe". This is the portable version. It accepts command line arguments. You can unpack the ZIP and leave Everything.exe in your Downloads folder. Then, in the administrator command prompt... everything.exe -create-filelist out.txt C:\ It will prepare the text file in a matter of seconds. You can open it with "notepad out.txt" if you like. The output for Program files, will have nice double quotes around the pathname, so you can look for illegal characters. "C:\Program Files",0,131297201598995371,128920152085554264,17 .... "C:\Program Files (x86)",0,131386215212441334,128920152087114204,17 In addition, you can scroll down and find the library control files. My account has the standard set of library control files. These files are just text files (likely XML). The first number here is likely to be the size, the next two are created or modified dates in nanoseconds, and I'm not sure what the last one is for. "C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windo ws\Libraries\Documents.library-ms",6522,131273027751521844,130798962619034712,822 4 "C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windo ws\Libraries\Music.library-ms",3555,131189369343230949,130798962619970714,822 4 "C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windo ws\Libraries\Pictures.library-ms",3590,131189369343230949,130798962619814713,822 4 "C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windo ws\Libraries\Videos.library-ms",3568,131189369343230949,130798962619814713,822 4 By checking for Libraries, I just want to see if you've been creative and made some of your own perhaps. ******* That's not an exhaustive set of diagnostics to run. The NFI utility wouldn't really add any value, and unlike "Everything.exe", doesn't put double quotes around the filename for certainty. Explorer has things like "recently used" or "quick access" items, which it sometimes displays. But for that to get mixed in with a regular directory display seems a bit unlikely. The recently used items would be in their own separate group. Paul |
#5
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
Nope, both there ... |
#6
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
SteveGG wrote:
Nope, both there ... With exactly the same spelling ? Maybe you'd better run NFI after all, as each of those items needs its own filenum. nfi.exe is inside this ZIP file. https://web.archive.org/web/20150329...us/oem3sr2.zip nfi C: nfi_c.txt See if *it* has two separate entries for them. HTH, Paul |
#7
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
Paul wrote:
SteveGG wrote: Nope, both there ... With exactly the same spelling ? Maybe you'd better run NFI after all, as each of those items needs its own filenum. nfi.exe is inside this ZIP file. https://web.archive.org/web/20150329...us/oem3sr2.zip nfi C: nfi_c.txt See if *it* has two separate entries for them. The problem you'll find with SteveGG is that he will not answer your questions or do so in a confusing or incomplete manner. You describe multiple solutions or instructions and he gives one blanket response to all of them but which likely only addresses one solution you offered. Also, your instructions won't let him [easily] see if there are non-visible characters in the filename, like a trailing space. Here's an example of how a trailing space got added that caused a duplicate folder name: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...ndows-folders/ By using the "dir /x" command (i.e., adding the /x switch), the shortnames get displayed which would eliminate any whitespace characters (e.g., space, tab, backspace, DEL, etc). The /x switch showed them there were 2 separate folders by different names that looked the same to the eye. The long name for one folder had a trailing space character which is obviously invisible to the eye in the absence of delimiters. For me, and because I've never created a duplicate folder (well, similar named folder that looked like another), using "dir c:\ /x" shows the long named program folders have the following shortnames: "Program Files" = PROGRA~1 "Program Files (x86)" = PROGRA~2 If there were a similar long-named "Program Files " (trailing space) then it would have a different shortname, like maybe PROGRA~3. I would think if the OP, in using Windows Explorer, had selected (moved into) a subfolder under in one of the program folders and then clicked in the address bar (to get rid of that stupid breadcrumb display) that the path would show if there were spaces, like a trailing space; e.g., "C:\Program Files\Adobe" for the path under one program folder and the other would show "C:\Program Files \Adobe". Spaces are not the only hidden characters that can be used in a folder or filename. An old trick of malware is to insert a hidden character that the user cannot type using the keyboard or will not be handled correctly by the input parser. One example is inserting the DEL or NUL character in a folder or filename. You won't see those no matter what DOS or GUI tool you use. This is also a trick used in the registry since those characters are not available via regedit.exe for the user to edit entries, and trying to navigate into a key to, say, change permissions results in a parsing error because regedit just uses the parsed value instead of the binary value. Programmatically any character can be used in a folder name, file name, or registry key or data item name. Only a few are reserved but that leaves lots of other characters available to use in a value, including the non-printing characters. As I recall, the reserved characters that cannot be programmatically used as the value of a name (folder or file or registry key or data item) a (less than), (greater than), : (colon), " (double quote), / (forward slash), \ (backslash), | (vertical bar or pipe), ? (question mark), and * (asterisk). Yep, NUL is allowed which means "abcd" could be "ab^cd" where ^ = NUL. You won't see it so you won't know that it is in the string unless you use a hex/binary editor to see the string's value. I've seen NUL used but it can run afoul of string parsers that assume strings all end in NUL as the terminating character so the [ab]user trying to use a NUL to make it impossible for normal users to input the string would end up shooting themself in their own foot; that is, "ab^cd" might get interpreted as just "ab". I haven't had to deal with non-printing characters (which includes whitespace characters, like tab and space) for a long time. When I had to deal with them in the file system, I had to use a disk editor that would let me look at the folder and file records in the file system and show me the binary value of each character in a name. I don't remember using this one but maybe it will show the binary characters in the string for a folder or filename in a record in the file system: http://www.disk-editor.org/ I had to use something like that to see the non-printable characters that some copy protection scheme used in the naming of their game files. I also remember having to use a different registry editor that would show me the non-printing characters (key and data names were shown as binary strings) since regedit won't show those. I suspect if the OP used "dir /x" that he could use a different short name to get rid of the duplicate (not the original) folder that it would just reappear later. Whatever created the duplicate folder would do it again sometime later. In the article, they said the duplicate was caused by a bad search parameter where a trailing space had been added to the path. Since a lot of parameters for programs are stored in the registry, I'd try searching on "\Program Files \" to see if any entries had the trailing space character. In Search Everything, you could regex to search the file system on "^C:\\Program Files \\" (without the double quotes shown here). Enable regex (under Search menu) and enter the regex string. The double backslash is needed to escape the escape character. In regex (regular expressions), \ is used to escape the next character so reserved characters can be used as normal characters. Although users use regedit.exe to see the registry, it is actually a binary database so NUL doesn't cause a problem there in the values of names. Sometimes non-printing characters show as tall box characters since the GUI showing the character is using it as a placeholder for a character that it cannot display, but that doesn't always happen. Plus space is usually shown as a whitespace character (it occupies space versus NUL that doesn't in the display of a string). https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...es-for-windows My experience with Linux users (developers mostly) is that while space is a legitimate character is an object name that its use is frowned upon. When Microsoft added longname support in their file system (and the same when they moved from .ini files to the registry database), both Microsoft and users got drunk on using the space character to make folders and files "readable". Instead of using camel case, like "ThisFolder\MyVacationPics" they'd use "This Folder\My Vacation Pics". Shortnames don't permit whitespace so the OP could use those to decide which was the duplicate folder -- but he should first determine what created it. He might want to use SysInternals' Procmon to add a filter on "C:\Program Files \" (with the space after Files) to see what might be using that path. If Procmon doesn't like that filter string then use the shortname for the duplicate/similar folder. Getting rid of the duplicate (well, similarly named) folder won't help if it just reappears. Folders cannot have the same name within a parent folder. Files cannot have the same name within the same folder. That they look the same to your eyes does not mean they are the same. Your eyes cannot see hitespace (the absence of a visible character) and non-printing characters. Although I mention looking at shortnames which do not permit whitespace, non-printing characters could still be employed. |
#8
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
Both have exactly the same everything. Just that the 2nd is
inaccessable. How can I have 2 folders with the same name ?! When I run nfi C it tells me it doesn't have access to drive C. |
#9
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
Same to you asshole !
I tried your "solution(s)" and they didn't work, so I said so. Sorry if that ruffled your feathers; no I take that back. |
#10
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
To all responders :
This "problem" is no big deal. I just ignore that 2nd mirror duplicate listing which is only a single line un-expanded and very easy. I can expand and work with the 1st and the 2nd remains un-expanded. I post on it every so often just to see if anything new etc. I don't care for VanguardLH's snide comments, but he does provide some useful (though not yet resolving) info. ( I don't like mysteries. ) |
#11
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
SteveGG wrote:
This "problem" is no big deal. I just ignore that 2nd mirror duplicate listing which is only a single line un-expanded and very easy. I can expand and work with the 1st and the 2nd remains un-expanded. I post on it every so often just to see if anything new etc. I don't care for VanguardLH's snide comments, but he does provide some useful (though not yet resolving) info. ( I don't like mysteries. ) Many lurkers and participants in this thread are interested because it is a puzzle and because we learn from the experience of seeing a puzzle solved. You were admonished by VLH because there were elements in Paul's answer which might have found/illustrated the problem's solution, but which were not carried out. Not all of what Paul proposed was of such difficulty that it couldn't hae been performed by you, but the absence of a direct response to each element -- such as 'too hard, didn't do that' -- or some other causes the readers here to wonder what would have been found had the operation been performed. For example, I for one would have like to have seen a *file* result from Paul's suggestion: Paul wrote: OK, when you open a Command Prompt window, cd \ dir do you see two "Program Files" there too ? You said that you could see two, but they might have differed by a trailing space (or other non-printing). You might be able to see that trailing space by sending the dir result to a file after you change the dir to the root with cd \ dir list.txt Then, when you open that list.txt with something like notepad, you might be able to use your cursor on one of the Program Files name and find a space at dir name end. -- Mike Easter |
#12
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
Many lurkers and participants in this thread are interested because it is a puzzle and because we learn from the experience of seeing a puzzle solved. You were admonished by VLH because there were elements in Paul's answer which might have found/illustrated the problem's solution, but which were not carried out. Not all of what Paul proposed was of such difficulty that it couldn't hae been performed by you, but the absence of a direct response to each element -- such as 'too hard, didn't do that' -- or some other causes the readers here to wonder what would have been found had the operation been performed. I've tried everything that was proposed months ago, as I felt was reasonable within the scope of the "problem", all to no avail as I reported. For example, I for one would have like to have seen a *file* result from Paul's suggestion: Paul wrote: OK, when you open a Command Prompt window, cd \ dir do you see two "Program Files" there too ? As I've said, yes. You said that you could see two, but they might have differed by a trailing space (or other non-printing). You might be able to see that trailing space by sending the dir result to a file after you change the dir to the root with cd \ Yes and there doesn't seem to be any difference in the 2 dirrectories whatsoever, except as shown below. No extra spaces or other funny stuff of any kine. Just duplicate listings of the exact same though empty folders. The very fact that the 2nd mirror duplicate of the 1st, automatically updates exactly according to any changes to the 1st, suggests that it is just some phantom duplicate listing of the 1st . Yet, bytes, files, and folders for the 1st are reasonable for what's there, but all 3 are 0 for the 2nd (?) dir list.txt I'm a little fuzzy on this. Please detail. |
#13
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
SteveGG wrote:
dir list.txt I'm a little fuzzy on this. Please detail. If you first get a command prompt, then go to your main directory as Paul described: cd \ .... that will put you at the root of the C: drive where those directory/folders are. If you just input dir .... the directory listing will be on your screen, but if you dir list.txt .... then that screen display will be written to a file on that C; drive Oops. I just checked this out in Win7 vs XP; Win7 won't let you write to the root of C; like that. So, you have to direct the file to your directory in Users. dir C:\Users\username\list.txt .... where username is your user ID to log into Windows. Then you can open that list.txt file with such as Notepad and find each Program Files entry. Then use your cursor to move to the end of each Program Files line and see if there is an empty (non-printing/showing) space there. -- Mike Easter |
#14
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
SteveGG wrote:
Both have exactly the same everything. Just that the 2nd is inaccessable. How can I have 2 folders with the same name ?! When I run nfi C it tells me it doesn't have access to drive C. Must be run from Administrative Command Prompt. In the run box, type "cmd". When the search result comes back, the top-most item is the Command Prompt executable. Right-click the top entry, select "Run As Administrator", then enter cd \ cd %userprofile% cd Downloads nfi C: nfi_c.txt HTH, Paul |
#15
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Explorer Duplicate Listings
Mike Easter wrote:
dir list.txt ... then that screen display will be written to a file on that C; drive Oops. I just checked this out in Win7 vs XP; Win7 won't let you write to the root of C; like that. So, you have to direct the file to your directory in Users. dir C:\Users\username\list.txt Paul's instructions to run cmd.exe as admin will also solve the problem of writing the dir to list.txt on C: without having to create a path to the user's dir. -- Mike Easter |
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