Two folders with identical (i.e., duplicate) names

Anonymous

When I look at my drive E in the Windows Explorer, I have two folders named \Users in the root (using Vista with the lastest updates). When I look from a cmd box, I only see one.

I think the second one was created when I used Vista's robocopy to backup my C files onto E (e.g. "robocopy c:\Users\Steve e:\Users\Steve"), but (1) I didn't think you could end up with duplicate names in the same folder and (2) how can I specify which of the two files I want to copy files to?

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Anonymous

You can't have two folders with the same name in the same directory - something must be different (maybe an underscore at the end of one or something else). I have no idea how or why this happened. When you scroll through each of the folders are they identical in terms of contents (same folders, same files, you can open files from both folders,...)? I'm not familiar with robocopy so I'm not sure if that was responsible (though it seems likely). If they are identical in all respects, just delete one and use the other one (or better, remame one to something else and save it elsewhere "just in case" - at least until you're sure the folder you selected is working properly and there are no problems. I'd give a month and then delete the other folder.

If you see only one in cmd then move some file to a different directory and then ccheck on Windows Explorer to see in which folder the change occurred (and verify it didn't occur in both). Then you'll know which folder to use and which to rename are indicated above.

I hope this helps.

Good luck.

Lorien - MCSE/MCSA/Network+/A+ --- If this post helps to resolve your issue, please click the "Mark as Answer" or "Helpful" button at the top of this message. By marking a post as Answered, or Helpful you help others find the answer faster.

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57 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-04-10T10:12:27+00:00

Had the same situation. Wasn't a huge problem for me, I just deleted one of the directories from Explorer (one was empty).

What I noticed, though, was that when using dir /X from the command prompt, the directory names *were* different, namely D:\logs\WWWMYS~1 and D:\logs\WWWMYS~2. You can probably use one of the names with robocopy if you need to target one of the directories specifically.

HTH, Matthijs
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Anonymous

2015-04-10T22:38:06+00:00

Names in Explorer come from the Desktop.ini file if it exists. This is so it can say different things to people who speak different languages. IE the Desktop folder is named Desktop in English only. The folder that holds desktop items is always called desktop but a german won't see that in Explorer.
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Anonymous

2015-04-13T07:48:40+00:00

While that's true, this wasn't the problem with me. I didn't have a desktop.ini file (checked with dir /A) and it wasn't only Explorer that showed duplicate files but also the command prompt with dir. Maybe the name contained some invisible unicode character, or some such.

Because this was not a directory which traditionally would contain a desktop.ini file but a log dir generated by IIS, I suspect this was just a NTFS fluke. In the old days one could trick FAT into having infinite recursion (C:\logs\logs\logs\etc). Those were the days :)

Regards,

Matthijs
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Anonymous

2016-03-04T20:11:22+00:00

Worked like a charm. Not often stumped anymore but this one got me. Thanks for the tip!
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