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Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder

Intended For
Windows XP only
If you're using Windows XP, you'll most likely find a My Pictures folder in your My Documents folder. Delete the folder, and it will appear the next time you start Windows. Delete it again, and Windows will create it again. Very annoying.

Now, one might think that if you changed the location of My Pictures using TweakUI so that Windows would use another folder as the default in which to save image files, then that would take care of it. But, no - the My Pictures folder is apparently hard-coded into Windows, which means you'll need something more drastic to keep your My Documents folder relatively clutter-free. Here's how to do it:

  • Open your My Documents folder.
  • Assuming it's empty, delete the My Pictures folder (if you haven't done so already).
  • Right-click in an empty area in My Documents, select New, and then Text Document.
  • Rename the new New Text Document.txt file to My Pictures (without a filename extension).
    Note: if you don't see the .txt filename extension here, go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab, and turn off the Hide extensions for known file types option.
  • Right-click your new My Pictures file, select Properties, and turn on the Read-only and Hidden options. Click OK when you're done.

That's it! Since you can't have two files with the same name (or a folder and a file with the same name) in the same directory, Windows won't be able to create the My Pictures folder as long as the file exists.


Written by: Annoyances.org
Last updated: Saturday, February 14, 2004

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