“I store all my files in AppData\Roaming because it’s more secure. I know computers.”

Posted by SpacemanLurker@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 135 comments

Back during the start of the pandemic, I was part of a team converting employees from desktop machines to laptops, so they could work remotely. We were doing dozens of migrations a week.

Our usual process was simple. We would pull the hard drive from the old desktop, connect it to a USB drive dock (the classic “USB toaster”), create the user profile on the new laptop, and copy over their data.

Most users had the usual stuff: Documents, Desktop, Pictures, maybe some random folders.

Then I got one migration that seemed too easy.

I mounted the user’s old drive and started checking the normal locations.

Desktop.
Documents.
Pictures.

Almost nothing.

Just a few small files.

I remember thinking it was strange, but I assumed he probably worked out of shared drives or OneDrive. That wasn’t unusual.

So I finished the migration, shipped the laptop out, and moved on.

A few days later he calls me.

“None of my files are here.”

I told him that was strange because there was almost nothing on the drive when I did the transfer. He immediately insisted he had loads of files.

Then he said something that caught my attention.

“My shortcut doesn’t work anymore.”

Apparently he had a shortcut on his desktop and another pinned in File Explorer that both pointed to his files.

So I asked where the files were actually stored.

Without hesitation he says:

“They’re in the Roaming folder.”

I paused for a second because I thought I misheard him.

I asked again just to be sure.

Yes.

AppData\Roaming

That’s where he stored all of his files.

Every document. Every folder. Everything.

His reasoning?

“It’s more secure. I know computers.”

To be fair, in a weird way he wasn’t completely wrong. Nobody goes digging around in the Roaming folder looking for someone’s spreadsheets.

Sure enough, I mounted the old drive again and checked:

AppData\Roaming was absolutely packed with files.

Thousands of them.

So instead of the normal migration, we ended up running a remote file transfer over the network to move everything into actual user folders.

And that’s the story of the only user I’ve ever met who used AppData\Roaming as their primary file storage system.

Honestly… part of me respects the commitment.

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pcnauta@reddit

A long time ago when I was a computer programmer and the free 'tech guy' for our floor (you'd be amazed at how few programmers actually know about Windows and the tech side of their computers), I learned something really fast.

I loved working with people who admitted they knew nothing about computers.

I liked working with people who said that they knew a little bit about computers.

I HATED working with people who claimed that they knew a lot/were experts.

The ones who admitted they knew nothing would answer all my questions as I asked them and then would sit back and let me work.

The ones who said they knew a little mostly answered my questions as I asked them and would watch what I do and ask (usually pretty good) questions.

The ones who claimed they knew a lot answered my questions in ways that they thought I needed to know (e.g. Did you add/update any programs in the last day? No. Well what about THIS? Oh, that shouldn't have changed anything) or in ways that THEY (incorrectly) understood.

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roguedaemon@reddit

The most dangerous user is the one who thinks they know everything

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Remo_253@reddit

I had a buddy that was this. Whatever the issue his first go to was to defrag the drive. Then start making changes he found on the internet. After it was totally screwed up he'd call me, and of course he couldn't remember all the changes he'd made.

I finally told him, it's your machine, do what you like with it. However, if you've made changes before calling me, you are on your own. I only had to stick to that once, then he called.

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josetann@reddit

To he fair, defragging actually did help more than it should have. Plus, it made me look like a tech wizard.

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MacBigASuchNot@reddit

Depends if he was defragging in 2013 or 2023.

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meitemark@reddit

I have defragged in 2023ish, so I could clone the 800GB of data from a 3TB HDD into a 1TB SSD.

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joe_attaboy@reddit

I worked at a Navy command some years ago and had a guy like this on staff. Officer, young, smart guy, but when he opened his mouth, he exposed how clueless he was about tech.

We were deploying new hardware to staff and doing what the OP described. Got to his office, started working, he's over my shoulder most of the time. When I started doing a file transfer from his old system, he starts questioning every process. I held my tongue for as long as I could, but finally turned to him and said "Lieutenant, do you want to do this? I can go work on someone else's system since you seem to know everything I'm doing."

Having been enlisted Navy myself, I would ordinarily never speak to an officer that way. But I was a civilian, older than him and a department head. That got his attention and he skulked off to get coffee.

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dedreo58@reddit

I remember a Lt. in charge of IT for the ship, with a degree in comsci...have to repeatedly be told where the drivers are of his personal equipment.

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jameson71@reddit

Windows is something they don’t cover much in comp sci

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KelemvorSparkyfox@reddit

Green LTs generally need slapping down once or twice, from what I've heard and read. The authority can do funny things to their brains at first. It's the same with newly-minted managers.

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joe_attaboy@reddit

This was the Naval weather community. When I said "smart," I meant it. The folks in that community had to be good at the science, the math and the voodoo, especially during hurricane season, which was a major part of this command's mission. I actually learned a ton about weather, and especially hurricane forecasting in my 8 years there.

But I never offered my opinion on weather predictions because it wasn't my sandbox (well, one time - the CO held a contest about where a tropical storm would make landfall in Florida. I beat out eight other AG enlisteds and officers with a joke prediction. The skipper offered to put me on the watch bill).

I never minded explaining things or making tech suggestions to the staff. But they had to stay out of my sandbox.

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dreaminginteal@reddit

There's a reason that "butter bar" is usually a term of contempt...

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smdvogrin@reddit

Not applicable to this case, unfortunately - Navy Lts are actually O-3, the same as an army Captain. A butter bar is an Army 2nd Lt, O-1.

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joe_attaboy@reddit

Yep. Butter bars are worn by Navy Ensigns. Those are gold. Silver ones are for the Lieutenant JGs.

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oloryn@reddit

This is often referred to as the "Expert Novice". They've learned (sometimes just part of) the basics and think that qualifies them as knowledgeable. If you're familiar with Dunning-Kruger and the confidence/knowledge graph that usually accompanies explanations of it, the Expert Novice is the person who gets to the top of the initial hump on the curve, and manages to park themselves there.

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CallidoraBlack@reddit

That applies to everything, not just tech.

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Azuredreams25@reddit

I know enough to get me by. I also know enough to use nuke programs when you really want to wipe a hard drive.
Overwrites all the data about 20 times and then formats the drive. Good luck recovering that.

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Nihelus@reddit

I know enough about computers that I’m quite useful to our IT guys who don’t want to drive to the middle of nowhere. My family was always so surprised that I didn’t go into IT. Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I want to, though. I absolutely despise working on computers.

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Langager90@reddit

Where I work, we have barcode scanners. These can be programmed by scanning appropriate barcodes. Last time one of them broke down, was the 2nd time I'd seen that, and I remembered doing something with barcodes.

So, I found the factory reset barcode from the provider, hoping that might work. Spoiler: It did, but did not solve the problem.

So, I went to our local IT guru and started explaining the whole affair... for about 5 seconds, before I caught myself mid-blabber and just went: "One of the scanners was making trouble, so I started fucking with it and it did not help, but doesn't seem to have made it worse. Do you have a programming barcode for it?"

Anyway, he got me a guide to setting it up right and all was well.

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ricochet180@reddit

Amen to that. I remember working at Veritas and trying to help someone troubleshoot - eh, something. Just needed to check/change a setting. THey fought me all the way. "I'm an MVP/CNA/NCT/PVP/WTF/CYA/MCPMAHRIEW! I've been doing this for years!" "... ok, then you should have no problem opening Control Panel and telling me what this setting is set to."

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syntaxerror53@reddit

"Control Panel? I'm an IT expert not an Electrician!".

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Merkuri22@reddit

I worked in tech support for about 10-15 years. I still do it now, just more indirectly.

I learned that when I call tech support, I do not tell them I know about computers. I let them walk me through all the stuff I've already tried. I do it all again. I don't try to jump ahead or predict what they're gonna ask.

Because yeah, like you said, the worst people to work with were the ones who were like, "I know computers. I'm an expert over here. Don't give me the kid stuff. I want the REAL solutions." They were so obnoxious and hostile.

So when I'm the customer, I just let them do what they've got to do. I don't play dumb - like, I might volunteer info if I think they need it (like if they can't find something and I know the location) - but I do my best not to cramp their style or walk over their script.

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ricochet180@reddit

Mm... I'm going to say "it depends on the company I'm dealing with and the problem." Like... Seagate, back in the spinning rust days, I had drives (rarely, granted, and "expected lifetime") fail. Call them up, "Drive type this, serial this, I'm getting the drive not recognized and a click every second." "OK, we'll send a replacement." Others - gather the information because I know what they'll ask already (ISP, especially. Lights are this, can talk to things on my network, I've already got something plugged in because I know you'll ask me to unplug and go directly to a router where I'll tell you the same thing, yes, it's been restarted, no you won't be able to reach it, but go ahead and try the reset, it's your time not mine. Oh, and there's an outage now... that's what I asked in the first place...)

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redstonefreak589@reddit

The ISP thing is SO real. I frequently have blips that are long enough where it’ll warrant a call, but when I call it’ll conveniently come back up. It got it the point where if I call I’ll already have run through the troubleshooting steps (Yes, my ONT is plugged in, yes I’ve tried going directly to my router, no the “service” light is not on, etc.)

I had one tech who, when I called and told her I already checked all the troubleshooting steps they would want me to do, she literally said “Well, I don’t know what else you want me to do. We don’t see any outages in your area” and I was caught so off guard that I just asked for them to document it and I hung up

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syntaxerror53@reddit

A colleague long time ago went to a site and knew there was some (WAN) Comms issue. Phoned ISP. They checked and said there's nothing wrong, all the while colleague could hear frantic typing on keyboard at the other end. Was told to restart the router. Lo and behold Comms restored. Colleague asked what was wrong. "Oh nothing, router just needed a restart". Colleague replied they already done this, was there a config issue? "No nothing wrong router just needed a restart". Colleague knew they were being lied to.

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andypanty69@reddit

I used to get this sort of thing. Demon days. Ring up and they'd still insist on following the script. Spend ages on the phone, most of it going through the basics then they would give some info like there is a problem currently. The actual real tech support people were a bit better, some would accept that I knew enough to be dangerous but not a network expert.

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OldGeekWeirdo@reddit

That's fine - up to a point. If we're trouble shooting a problem on my phone and they want me to do a factory reset, I draw the line. That's more painful then the problem I'm dealing with. (And I have low confidence that's really the issue.)

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FigForsaken5419@reddit

I freely admit that I know enough to be dangerous and not enough to solve anything beyond "is it the cord, connection, or internet?" Before calling IT.

And yet I was still the on-site tech deploying computers at my last company.

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Aciphex007@reddit

Thats me! I know enough to be dangerous. My favorite line is asking if they know what a TRS80 is. Some do, some don't. I started learning how to code on one of those back in the 80's, in middle school! I wish I had stayed with computers, but there are so many different fields now.

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nivenfres@reddit

It's what got me into computers. Learned BASIC on the TRS80 Color Computer 2! My mom still says I learned to read the same time I learned to program, since I would enter the programs from magazines.

I love trying to explain the concept of using audio cassettes as storage to people.

My grandfather had rigged up a 5 1/4" IBM floppy drive to Coco disk controller. He had rigged a manual toggle switch that allowed the use of dual density disks, but it was all manual. So a dual sided, dual density disk would have 4 possible places files could be stored. Side A1, Side A2, Side B1, and Side B2. Of course, it couldn't automatically switch sides either, that required ejecting the disc and manually flipping it.

Ah, those were the days.

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archina42@reddit

OMG - what a blast. My very first computer - ran some finance program

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Fraerie@reddit

AKA the Trash-80.

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spiritsarise@reddit

Wow. Takes me back!

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tessler65@reddit

Ah, the old TRS-80. My school got a whole lab of them my senior year in high school. They were "networked" and had a primary "software/file server" and printer. The software server was the only one with floppy disk drives. You could download software to all the student machines simultaneously, but could only "upload" from one machine at a time.

I devoured the manuals and taught myself BASIC on those systems. Set the course of my life!

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Crizznik@reddit

Also, people who think they know a lot tend to get in the way of you doing the thing to fix it. They are the kind of person who would move their mouse while I'm trying to fix a problem remotely. LET ME DRIVE AND FIX YOUR SHIT.

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RiverOfJudgement@reddit

My ex would never let me take the mouse and keyboard to fix things. I had to stand over their shoulder and explain everything. They also had severe rage issues so as soon as it took even slightly too long, they started having a full on meltdown. Yelling and aggressively hitting keys and clicking their mouse.

But they were clueless about tech and we lived together so I had to deal with this every single time they had a problem, or they'd have breakdowns over things not working (crying ones this time instead of yelling )

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andypanty69@reddit

In my defense I'm also trying to get some of my work done while answering emails and chats from my and other teams and, in the car of my team, usually problem solving their inability to think.

I do try to remember not to jiggle things but sometimes forget.

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jamoche_2@reddit

I was that person once, because I was used to Solaris where the person remoting in got their own session, GUI and all, which didn’t interfere with mine.

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Crizznik@reddit

That would be nice. No where I've worked in IT had a setup like that. Though the last place I worked did have an easy to use interface to do PowerShell stuff without having to be in their computer and without having to do PSSession shenanigans.

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jamoche_2@reddit

Technically it was a Unix server which could support multiple users, even though physically it was a tower sitting under my desk and I was the primary user. My company had weird rules about "servers" — I couldn't do a soft restart, but I could pull the plug. Couldn't change the color settings either, which is why I had the Windows box so I could log into it in 8-bit color mode.

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GrumpyOldGeezer_4711@reddit

I once had to call the user’s boss and tell them to get that user-person far away from their desk if I was to continue fixing their system. Very rarely has my bloodpressure spiked like that day…

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Ha-Funny-Boy@reddit

This reminded me of a time I was driving back from a trip. My passenger was a physician. We knew each other but not very well. He asked me what I did for a living and I replied I was computer programmer (a job most people understood, but not very well.) He asked me a question about computers and I gave him a simple answer, not very detailed. He said I could be more specific, he knew a lot about computers. So I started in with a lot of detail about how things worked.

After a couple of minutes I noticed his eyes were "glazed over". I said, "Did I loose you, Bob?" He said yes and that was the end of a detailed description. LOL! We talked about other things afterward.

This was before HIPAA and he was a psychiatrist. I wish now I had asked about some of the things people did or were into. That would have made a better story than computer functioning.

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Miklonario@reddit

Reminds me of my ISP days.

Troubleshooting with an 'advanced' computer user: "I'll have you know I am a PROGRAMMER at APPLE, and I know for a FACT this modem doesn't need to plug into a phone line, it was WIRELESS on it! I'm ON THE WIRELESS right now! Now FIX THIS!" (it was a DSL connection)

Troubleshooting with a 90-year old retiree who advised straight away that they know nothing about computers: "Well I did what you said and plugged the telephone into all the plugs in the phone box, and I couldn't hear anything! So you said that it's AT&T's job to fix, right?" Me, crying tears of joy: "Yes ma'am, I'll have them out first thing tomorrow morning!"

Guess who's connection would get restored faster.

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andypanty69@reddit

The 90 year old forgot to tell you her family have been telling her to change the batteries in her hearing aide for a week. :)

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Doowoo@reddit

In my work environment I'm really glad we all accept that we all don't know everything. We are all willing to take feedback and ask for help when we doubt our own solutions for a problem, where getting the solution right the first time is super critical.

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mazzicc@reddit

I know a lot about my computer.

I know fuck all about how my company IT administers its systems, because that’s not my job.

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BenCisco@reddit

I regret that I have only one upvote to give for this comment.

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stifflizerd@reddit

I'm on the flip side. Used to work tech support, now a software engineer, and my company's tech support (understandably) always handles things from the first steps.

Which ngl, is a bit infuriating considering how much time I've wasted with them remoted in, trying all of the things I already tried (and listed in the ticket), only to eventually get the ticket escalated to someone who finally confirms the suspicion I put in my ticket: that it's restricted via group policy.

Like I've been there, I get you can't trust customers, especially if they act like they know computers, but if I could just get my actual questions checked before we started troubleshooting I would be sooo happy.

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pcnauta@reddit

I also believed that this was due to the VAST amount of users who grossly overestimate their computer knowledge. Thus it's a 'this is why we can't have nice things' situation.

Besides, they have no idea how much you or I know AND their experience is that we are most likely lying to them. So I understand the assumption to start with the beginning.

I mean, haven't we all had at least one time where someone was complaining about some complicated computer issue and it turned out they had unplugged/turned off/dimmed the screen?

Plus, they're most likely reading a script that they are simply not allowed to set aside.

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Dhaeron@reddit

Besides, they have no idea how much you or I know AND their experience is that we are most likely lying to them. So I understand the assumption to start with the beginning.

Eh, having been on both sides of it i don't. If a user tells you what they think the cause of the problem is, it only costs a couple minutes to check it out first before going through the entire process. Yeah, you shouldn't rely on what users say and always check yourself to be sure, but that doesn't mean you have to ignore all input. Worst case, you do a check out of order and lose a little time, but you still have a user who doesn't feel like they're being ignored.

Unless they're coming up with something completely bat-shit, then just say you're sorry you're not allowed to deviate from the script.

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paulcaar@reddit

With the example given this severely lacks s differentiation between an incident that needs fixing and a change request.

Simple question: has this ever worked for you?

If no, why even go through the restarts and the profile rebuilds? Straight to changes, especially if there's already a suspicion it's due to user privileges.

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roger_ramjett@reddit

It is worse today. Everyone is an "expert" because they did a google AI search.

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AJourneyer@reddit

I worked in IT long ago, but haven't in some time so there's a lot that's unfamiliar to me. My current line when seeking support is "I know a little about a lot, I used to know a lot about a lot, but now just enough to know I can cause a lot of trouble. Guide me please".

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JohnnyMiskatonic@reddit

I first realized that programmers were not obligate computer experts in 2013, when our temp tech guy, who mainly had developer experience, didn't know how to ping a machine on the local network.

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CAShark-7@reddit

"Oh, that shouldn't have changed anything." Yeah, had an expert network guy think that and (without telling anyone) made a change to a file server in our Long Beach office. Crashed the server. In the middle of the day. The only time I have ever, literally, had my phone ring off the hook. The only thing working was the phones, and boy did every single person in that office make use of it by calling me, my boss, and HIS boss.

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wildwing@reddit

I know enough to know I don’t know enough.

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Fatigue-Error@reddit

I had almost the same story, but worse. The “recycle bin.” Yes. He had all of his files in the recycle bin, because that was so easy to get to.

Unfortunately for him, my order was to upgrade the OS on his computer, and emptying the Recycle Bin was the quickest way for me to get space to do the upgrade. Luckily, when he tried to get my boss to fire me, boss instead told him he was dumbass.

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pyrhus626@reddit

I had a lawyer client that had a full hard drive. We eventually found the main culprit was his mailbox, like pushing 100GB monstrous with most of it being in his deleted folder. I told him the problem was old, deleted emails and got permission to clear out everything older than a year on the off chance he deleted something he still needed.

Turns out he used Deleted as a “stuff I’ve read already folder” without telling us, and just assumed we could magically tell which ones were junk and which ones he meant to keep. He was yelling at me for losing his emails and I’m trying to even wrap my head around how he could be mad when I explicitly got his permission to do it

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SLJ7@reddit

"I know I'm in the wrong but my pride can't handle it so I'm just gonna blame you instead."

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AbbyM1968@reddit

There's a story on here that a lady was putting files into the recycling bin to "clean them." SMH

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socal_swiftie@reddit

twitches

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xenontechs@reddit

Ok but the Roaming folder is supposed to roam around with the profile, sooo... Technically correct on a few levels here

(Only on Windows domain, etc, I know)

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Crizznik@reddit

Yeah, and I know you know this, I just want to add, if you do actually set up roaming profiles on your network, keeping documents in there isn't doing you any favors. They would be using a file server to for user data storage to automatically back up and map your DOCUMENTS folder, not anything in the Roaming folder. Roaming folder just stores profile configurations, not documents.

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ne0rmatrix@reddit

I am a software dev who uses appdata for placing apps and there data. I do that for windows store apps that are currently running as exe. It is weird but I have to run them sometimes not as store apps because I need to actually access a ton of data or files that I simply would never have access to for debugging purposes.

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kryptik_thrashnet@reddit

I put all of my programs like that in "C:\Portable Programs"

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smokinbbq@reddit

This sounds like a good way to have too many files in a folder that Windows doesn't like having lots of files, and then random issues start popping up about their user profiles being too slow to do xyz.

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Dhaeron@reddit

I remember in ye olde times windows (NT4) used to entirely sync certain profile folders. So when users logged onto a new machine, windows would copy everything from the server to the local machine, which could take ages if the user had all their crap stored in those folders. I worked at a school where this was a constant annoyance because teachers were used to using the machines in their own classrooms basically like personal devices, not work devices. And then the machines in the shared rooms would constantly run out of space and teachers complained that logging on took ages...

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chartupdate@reddit

That was the Cookies folder. Why Microsoft in their wisdom decided that browser cookies, often numbering in the hundreds, required to be shuffled back and forth every time a user logged on was baffling. Especially as the log OFF process invariably timed out before all the files had been re-uploaded. Meaning the deletion of expired ones never processed and the network store just grew exponentially with revoked tokens.

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pyrhus626@reddit

Windows profiles break all on their for now discernible reason, they don’t need end user help by shoving a ton of files in places they don’t belong.

I HATE rebuilding user profiles but had to do it so often because it either got corrupted or the user broke something so esoteric it wouldn’t be worth the time and expense of figuring it out and trying to fix it vs just nuking the profile.

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syntaxerror53@reddit

Appdata is also a decent place to store files from prying eyes. Done it myself a few times.

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Arokthis@reddit

This makes me think of the kids that use a folder named "homework" for their p0rn.

The smarter ones made a folder deep in the Windows operating files because they knew their parents wouldn't go anywhere near it.

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L-Space_Orangutan@reddit

by the 00s parents like mine were aware

plus they'd check the cookie data as that'd cache images

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Th4t9uy@reddit

Do they also park their car in the kitchen for similar reasons?

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LawfulnessUnhappy422@reddit

Yes.

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Polymarchos@reddit

At least he knew computers enough to identify where he had put them.

The number of users who have no idea where they save things (because Windows makes it so easy to not know) is astounding.

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Aciphex007@reddit

I hate it when I can't find a file after I save it. I usually go back into the program and go through the save process again just to see where it was saved. I know most of them default to the last folder used, but I can have 20 projects with 10-15 folders in each one.

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kai58@reddit

I found it even more annoying when windows decided saving everything in fake folders that don’t actually exist on my computer should be the default. Wasn’t that hard to turn off but it shouldn’t have been enabled without at least asking me in the first place.

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TheGogmagog@reddit

Wait, that can be turned off? I have to scroll down to the last option to make sure the file saves in the correct project folder. I guess I have some searches to make tomorrow.

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erie11973ohio@reddit

For some bizarre reason, on my computer, "my files" are at:

Desktop / Documents (or Pictures, etc) This is where my laptop put the Documents from being brand new.

Windows / Office saves at:

Desktop/ C: / windows / user/ myname/ Desktop / Documents

Never mind any One Note BS

I have a Cannon MFP. It really burys the scanned files way into the c: drive. I have to not click away / close the window until I can put the file where I want it!!

Aggravating as all bleeping get out!!!

(I was told years ago, to put everything in the "My Documents" so that backups / drive recovery is simple. On Windblows 10, that became the Desktop? )

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LFK1236@reddit

You can change the location of built-in folders (e.g. Downloads) in the Settings (at least in Windows 11). You can also just refrain from using them at all.

If you have OneDrive, you can also adjust slightly which directories get synchronised.

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pyrhus626@reddit

This is why I load Everything on all my computers. Having a real search instead of File Explorer’s garbage makes it way easier to track shit down. Almost too easy because I started getting lazy about where I was choosing to save stuff lol

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TheFluffiestRedditor@reddit

Handheld device users are even less knowledgeable, because iOS and Android actively work to hide file storage from the users.

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bob152637485@reddit

It infuriates me that in the newer versions of Office, file explorer doesn't open by default when saving a new file. I don't WANT the pretty office overlay that assumes what folder I want to save in, I WANT to see the decades old file explorer and navigate to where I want to save. The fact that there's not even an optional setting to make file explorer the default bugs me every time I have to save a new file.

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-Goatllama-@reddit

because Windows makes it so easy to not know

uuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhhh

yep

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ShelLuser42@reddit

I'm actually quite surprised to read that you guys never considered to include %appdata% with the profile transfers, also because it's the de-facto location where most applications... stores their data (no pun intended), which is also why Windows has a dedicated shortcut for it... actually it has 2: %appdata% and %localappdata%.

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IFeelEmptyInsideMe@reddit

Why though? I can't think of a single program in our stacks that keeps files locally in appdata folders that isn't temporary cached file.

What programs are you running that does that?

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JoeDonFan@reddit

At one place I worked, there was a guy whose claim to fame was he went to HS with a member of Hootie and the Blowfish. Also, for some strange reason, he had convinced a lot of the company he was a tech support guru. You know; He knew stuff about computers.

He worked in Marketing.

Back in the DOS & Windows 3.1 days I got a ticket from him saying he needed an admin PW and 32-bit disk access. Clearly, he wasn't going to get an admin PW but I was the poor sap tasked with going to his desk to see what he needed 32-bit disk access for.

Here it is: He had an image of a small item, and he said that 32-bit disk access with an admin PW would prevent it from becoming pixelated when blown up for a pamphlet he was creating. I did my best to explain to him what was happening, but I'm not sure he got it.

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JoeDonFan@reddit

You haven't had a user place important folders & files in the Trash/Recycling bin yet?

Honest, I can't figure some people out.

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Sandwich247@reddit

At my old work, your roaming folder was stored in a share on the server (helped with licencing stuff with some software we had) so the files would be carried across to new computers while your desktop, documents, etc weren't

I can understand why someone might do that, but I don't think they think about why the documents, desktop, etc aren't stored on the server in the first place

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Spirta@reddit

Every time I have to "fix" something and the instructions tell me to go to appdata I feel like hitting my computer with a sledgehammer

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Thepcfd@reddit

and thTs why you transfer whole profile folder not open it and transfer what you like.

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chartupdate@reddit

A nice theory, but my %appdata% folder on this laptop presently consists of 225,243 files, 69,887 folders and a grand total of 30.5GB of data. Precious little of which will actually end up being crucial to the operation of any machine I elect to port to. But I'll sit and wait for the two lots of back and forth transfer of each of these if you really insist.

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Thepcfd@reddit

nothink is crucial until user ask you where are his bookmarks, signatures for outlook etc. and then you gona be that one idiot who delete them.

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Garble7@reddit

I once migrated someone from OE to Thunderbird. Moved everything but his deleted items which was huge.

That’s where kept his emails.

He got mad but the main boss told him he was stupid for keeping everything there

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anna-the-bunny@reddit

OK, but why wasn't the entire AppData folder part of the transfer? You're essentially wiping out any configuration data from apps that actually store configuration data in the right places.

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V2Blast@reddit

Did you use AI to generate this post? Why?

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tones76@reddit

On 1996, as a desktop tech for MacOS users (we were using OS 7.5.3 from memory), i was doing a system deal for a user but couldn't continue as it kept running out of disk space. Not entirely unusual in that era, but the usual fixes didn't work - that's when i realised his trash was full, so i emptied it which solved the issue.

Next day he calls up complaining that all good files are gone. After a few minutes of troubleshooting, it became clear that he was using the trash to store his files!! 🤦 It's been 30 years and i still clearly remember this, from the sheer stupidity of it! 🤣

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FauxReal@reddit

The only instance of security through obscurity working. lol

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Tygronn@reddit

I mean sure this is technically more secure. But the glaring shortcut on the desktop straight to it negates that "security through obscurity" angle. Also if you just search for known file types.

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LupusTheCanine@reddit

Except most attackers won't analyze shortcuts in the desktop folder.

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Tygronn@reddit

Maybe. Depends on what they're looking for. People are notorious for throwing important crap to the Desktop folder.

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Collec2r@reddit

When I started doing IT Support (still do) I was helping somebody who couldn't send/receive emails. No space left in account. Simple.... just empty trash, right? Wrong. That was where she kept her archive. Her trash folder was her freaking archive.

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Hebrewhammer8d8@reddit

So if user know about computers, then the user can back up and recover themselves?

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CAShark-7@reddit

"I know computers" Famous last words.

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SleeperAwakened@reddit

But do you know printers?

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pyrhus626@reddit

Nobody knows printers

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JackSprat47@reddit

Anyone who claims to know printers should be dealt with in the same way that you would deal with someone who claims to have proof of a flat earth theory.

They might even believe what they say. Nevertheless, that doesn't give them a microgram of credibility.

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Aciphex007@reddit

I know enough about computers to be dangerous!

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Idenwen@reddit

I had some users with creative ideas ... Always with a mix of knowledge and stupidity.

Like removing the write protection on programdata or the programs installation folders and storing files there next to the program (word docs where word.exe was etc)

One removed system protection of c:\Windows and stored stuff there because "it's in windows"

Using the bin as a temporary file collection (delete from different places, open bin, move all to new destination)

More recently reopening all important word files to keep them in the recent file list of word because "they get deleted when bot doing so" (drop out of most recent documents) and printing and retyping them when they needed more files that the recent docs was holding.

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TheBeckFromHeck@reddit

This is a CatGPT story

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ItsKorun@reddit

Honestly this is some how better than the guy I reloaded who stored everything in C:\temp.

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jeffrey_f@reddit

My environment consists of Desktop and laptops. EVERYONE gets and H: (home folder) on the network. They are trained on day 1 to NEVER store anything on C: because if your drive/computer dies, your files are not recoverable (they are but we will not). They are explicitely told to store everything on H: if you plan on using it in the future.

I've had only 1 person complain after a device failure. However, they owned the problem and accepted the loss.

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Loren-DB@reddit

FYI you don't have to make every sentence its own paragraph.

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WaytoomanyUIDs@reddit

Wut

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magnus150@reddit

Guess a good case of security through obscurity? I certainly would have never looked there either. Nothing lives there but weird config files.

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pyrhus626@reddit

I feel like most bad actors would just search the entire drive for common file types and Hoover them up, so putting them somewhere secure isn’t going to help much. Maybe if it’s grandma installing a remote support app so “Microsoft” from the pop up can help but they usually just want you to enter credit card info somewhere or open your browser and scrape all your credentials. They aren’t digging around looking for spreadsheets

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magnus150@reddit

Well yeah its not a REAL option. Just kinda amusing that I never would have thought to look there.

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henke37@reddit

It's just as secure as UsersDocuments and UsersDesktop. All three locations should be part of the roaming user profile.

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Crizznik@reddit

Though your roaming folder doesn't keep track of your documents, it's just for your profile configurations.

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henke37@reddit

It will keep track of YourDocuments in pretty much all sane configurations.

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Crizznik@reddit

I know setting up roaming profiles in general will, but I don't think the AppData/Roaming folder does. It will keep track of where your documents folder is being stored on the network, but it will still be something that's kept in a separate server and map to your My Documents folder, not anything within the Roaming folder.

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henke37@reddit

"Separate server"? Aren't you fancy, using more than one server for all the user profile folders.

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Crizznik@reddit

Everywhere I worked would follow Microsoft's suggestions to the letter, including having at least a separate share for everything like that, if not separate servers. Point is though, you're probably going to either not have access to your files or have a really slow logon if you store files in your Roaming folder with roaming profiles.

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tech-guy-says-reboot@reddit

Assuming you use roaming profiles.

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mrkorb@reddit

He reminds me of the kid I knew in high school who confidently asserted that he “knew Japanese” but could not accurately pronounce any of it.

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Thelgow@reddit

And on the flip side I was once cleaning up a shared network folder that a copier would put scans into, and found some guys Excel sheet with all his personal passwords.

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redkeyboard@reddit

To be fair what kind of "migration" just transfers files, and from a few folders too? I'm sure every employee is pissed.

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StoneyBolonied@reddit

I keep all of my personal files in /bin/ because that's my personal 'bin' to dump files into obviously

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iacchi@reddit

I konw that an enterprise environment is not a home environment, but when I need to move people's (friends/family) files over to a new computer they just purchased, I make sure to move a lot of the stuff that's in the Roaming folder as that's where all user settings (including browser profiles) for a lot of apps are, so that when they're reinstalled in the new pc the user will find all their stuff there already, program configuration wise. Even in an enterprise environment, if the new laptops were not fetching this folder from the domain or something, I'm surprised nothing in there was copied over to the new machines. Or am I thinking something stupid here?

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detroitmatt@reddit

I mean, manually storing stuff in roaming is insane, yes, but it is the designated place for applications to store data that can be migrated from computer to computer. Programs will store settings there, temp/unsaved files, browser profiles, all kinds of user data. He's nuts for doing it manually and security has nothing to do with it, but yes you should have been copying roaming, that's what roaming is for.

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