Complete Folder Broken

Sorry guys, I'm not really sure if this is the right section for this or not. And I'm thinking that this is possibly a problem I can't fix but here goes anyway.

Yesterday I was having trouble with my email program (thunderbird) and it would open and then freeze after about 3 seconds. I tried everything I could think of but couldn't fix it so I completely uninstalled it and then reinstalled it. It worked fine after that. The I thought I'd run Nortons to see if perhaps I had a virus that caused the problem but when I tried to run Nortons I was getting some error message so I uninstalled it and reinstalled it.

Everything seemed fine after that until this morning. I turn my laptop on to find that my 'My Documents' folder is no longer working. I get this message when I try to open it:

Documents.Library-ms is no longer working.


Of course this is the main folder that contains all my files and now I can't access them. So I tried running Nortons again and I couldn't open it at all. Once again had to uninstall and reinstall Nortons.

But it didn't fix my 'my documents' folder problem. I tried doing a restore to a restore point but it didn't work. Is there anyway that I can recover the files from this folder?

I'm seriously considering doing a full factory reset at this point just to be sure everything is ok, although I really don't want to do that.

 

Don't do a factory reset as that will destroy all the information in the My Documents folder!

Which OS are you running? If XP go to My Computer and then Documents and Settings folder. Click on your User name folder. Do you see a My Documents folder there--and can you open it?

 

I have Windows 7

 

Oh yes I can access it that way - wow - thank you so so so much!

Can I just delete the documents folder that isn't working or should I copy this one somewhere first. I think I might go back everything up on a USB drive before I do anything else

Thank you so much - you're a life saver!

 

Then in Computer go to C: folder then Users folder the yourusername folder then My Documents. Does it open?

 

Yes got it - thank you so much!

 

Don't delete the Documents folder. The "Documents.Library-ms" error has something to do with the Libraries function not working. That should be fixable. It is a special kind of shortcut. I'm not sure how to fix it but maybe someone will jump in or I can look around tomorrow.

Just for you reference your personal documents are always really located in that Users\yourusername folder. The access from the desktop or Explorer window is just a special type of shortcut. It is the shortcut that has to be fixed. But you are fine accessing the actual folder until that problem can be addressed.

Do do a backup for piece of mind. That way if you have multiple problems you can put factory restore back as an option.

 

Fantastic - thanks so much for your help!

 

I just Googled the error "Documents.Library-ms is no longer working" and found straight away how to fix that library. Took all of 5 seconds so everything is back to normal now.

Thanks

 

Great! Please tell us what worked for you, so it can help someone else.

 

Ok, this is what I found to fix it:

Oddly enough, it seems to fix this problem you need to delete the misbehaving library first. Deleting a library does not delete the content of the folder. To fix this problem, open Windows Explorer, right-click on the corresponding library and choose Delete. Click Yes when asked for confirmation.

Then, in the navigation pane of Windows Explorer, right-click on Libraries and click Restore default libraries. This recreates the library that you just deleted. This option will only restore the default libraries that came with Windows 7.

Very simple!