Virtual folder mystery

Grreg · Post by **Grreg** » 2003 Oct 09, 16:42

Hello to whoever might read this!

So there I was happily creating folders and sorting files into them when suddenly, I open a folder and as I am about to create a sub-folder within it, I see that the new folder button (and menu item) is greyed out. When I tried to re-name another folder in that directory I saw a message at the bottom of the screen that said "Rename is not supported for virtual folders". I looked at the pathname and saw that it had been reduced to *

So my questions are, what is a virtual folder? how did I create them? can I turn them into regular folders?

I created most of this directory structure before I found 2xexplorer, in some cases using the dos xcopy comand with the /t and /e arguments, which is just about strecthing the limits of my knowlege in this area.

I can't find a word about virtual folders in the windows help stuff. I'm using windows 98 to work with files stored on a Novell server and this never came up working on the desktop and with windows explorer.

Any clues would be VERY much appreciated!

Thanks,

Post by **nikos** » 2003 Oct 09, 16:45

looks like a hiccup
try closing/restarting 2x or/and rebooting

BTW virtual folders are stuff like "control panel" and "my computer" which don't have any filesystem folder corresponding to them. In your case clearly you have filesystem directories

Grreg · Post by **Grreg** » 2003 Oct 09, 18:30

Hi, thanks for replying.

I've done some reading and I sort see what virtual folders are but I can't fathom how I managed to get a handfull of them in the middle of an otherwise normal directory structure. So, should 2xExplorer be able to rename them and create new directories within them? Or is that an expected limitation? (I've restarted 2xEx and rebooted, no change)

Thanks again,

Grreg · Post by **Grreg** » 2003 Oct 09, 20:56

The really frustrating thing is not being able to create new folders where I need them. I need to figure out how to "un-virtualize" these folders.

Hmmm...

Post by **nikos** » 2003 Oct 10, 08:37

can you create folders in there with explorer?
also please try the new xplorer2 which will give us more information about these strange folders

Grreg · Post by **Grreg** » 2003 Oct 10, 15:56

Yes, everything behaves normally when done through windows explorer. I also just realized that folders I am creating as I go from within 2x are being created as virtual folders. I don't know what conditions determine whether a folder will be virtual or not at its creation.

Could it have something to do with the directories I'm working with being located on a network server rather than my local HD?

I thought I had the latest version, I'll look for the new one.

Thanks,

Post by **nikos** » 2003 Oct 11, 07:25

xplorer2 isn't a new version; it is a completely new file manager. The good thing about it is that it shows a lot of information in a debug channel (DBMON) as it runs, so i'll get to see exactly the attributes of these weird folders.

to make sure these folders aren't virtual, try opening a DOS box and cd to them. That won't work if the path is UNC though

Grreg · Post by **Grreg** » 2003 Oct 14, 14:55

Hi again,

Well I had some trouble with x2 so I went back to 2x. Sorry I can't be more explicit but I'm under pressure to get something done so I couldn't experiment more with it. If I get a chance later today I'll try it again and see what happens.

I made an interesting discovery today though, I hit return before I finished renaming a folder and then opened it, it was not "virtual". I realized that I hadn't typed the full name so I went back and added the rest of the name, it became "virtual". I noticed and shortened the name again, back to NOT "virtual. This seems to be happening at a total path length of 38 characters. Tried with some other folders, same thing.

Cd'ing to the folders in DOS is no problem.

Whoops, my mistake, it's not the length of the path, it's the length of the folder name. Over 8 characters and it becomes "virtual".

Post by **nikos** » 2003 Oct 14, 16:03