Recovering Misplaced Windows Shell Folders

Windows
Tips
Recovering Windows shell folders such as Documents, Videos, and Pictures after they were accidentally moved to the root of a drive.
Author

Pinn Xu

Published

April 22, 2024

9 min read · 1753 EN words · 29 中文字

1 Preface

This was the first extended troubleshooting write-up I kept in Notion, and it marked the start of my habit of documenting how I solve problems, both to share and to reference later.

The write-up prompted me to adopt Notion much more often as a regular tool. Investigating this particular problem also introduced me to VSCode, my first encounter with an IDE, and it is where my interest in programming began.

The Takeaways section presents the summary of the problem and the shortest path to a fix. The remainder of the article documents how I diagnosed the problem and worked through it.

2 Takeaways

2.1 The Problem

A Windows 10 shell folder (e.g., Desktop, Documents, Pictures ) was accidentally moved to the root of a drive (e.g., D:\, E:\). How can it be recovered?

2.2 The Fix

  1. Create the target folder (e.g., E:\Users\UserName\Videos\).
  2. Edit the registry.
    • Press Win + R and type regedit.
    • Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders.
    • Find the entry whose value is the drive root (e.g., E:\).
    • Change it to the path of the folder you just created (e.g., E:\Users\UserName\Videos\).
    • Save and restart the computer.
  3. Show hidden system files.
    • Open the target folder.
    • Go to File > Options > View.
    • Check ⏺ Show hidden files, folders, and drives.
    • Uncheck ◻ Hide protected operating system files.
  4. Restore icon & display name.
    • Find desktop.ini in the target folder, open it in Notepad.
    • Set the IconResource and LocalizedResourceName entries to the right resource index (listed in Table 1).
desktop.ini
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,<NameResource index>
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,<IconResource index>
<OtherEntries...>

Once finished, remember to re-hide the system files revealed in step 3.

3 The Problem: Moving a Shell Folder by Mistake

While cleaning up my C drive one day, I noticed that a batch of shell folders under C:\Users\<username> had not yet been moved to the E drive, so I decided to relocate them all at once.

Figure 1: System Folders

Taking the Saved Games file as an example, I opened its Properties , and clicked Location tab. Then I changed its path from C:\Users\Lenovo\Saved Games to E:\, and clicked Move.

Figure 2: Changing the Folder Location

However, the Saved Games folder suddenly vanished. At that point I realized I had set the root of the E drive itself as the destination. I thus began searching for a fix, but the results were not what I expected — people are talking about games rather than Windows shell folders.

I then tried other shell folders as search terms: Videos (too common a word, yielding noisy results), 3D Objects (a distinctive name, but obscure), Desktop (a special case whose fixes might not generalize), etc.

After a few attempts, I settled on a solution: editing the registry.

Figure 3: The Fix: Editing the Registry

4 The Fix: Editing the Registry

The steps are as follows:

  1. Create the target folder E:\Saved Games\ to hold the Saved Games folder where you want to move.

  2. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog, type regedit, and open the Registry Editor.

Figure 4: Opening the Registry Editor

  1. Locate and change the path.
    Go to:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

    Find the entry whose value is E:\ and change it to E:\Saved Games.
    (Be sure to create the folder before editing the registry.)

Figure 5: Editing the Registry
  1. Restart and verify.
    After restarting your computer, press Win + R and type shell:SavedGames. If it opens E:\Saved Games, the recovery succeeded.
Figure 6: Verifying the Registry Change
Figure 7: Jumping to Saved Games

At this point the folder works again, but it still shows the default folder icon.

4.1 Restoring the Icon

An article was found explaining where Windows stores its system icons.

Figure 8: Article: Where Windows Stores Icons

Through Properties > Customize > Change Icon, I found that the current icon source was SHELL32.dll . However, the Saved Games icon was not included there, suggesting that shell folder icons are stored across multiple DLL files.

Properties > Customize > Change Icon

Current Icon Location
Figure 9: Current icon file: SHELL32.dll

I went through the DLL files listed in the article and eventually found the Saved Games icon in imageres.dll, along with the icons for Desktop, Videos, and others.

Figure 10: Other System Files Containing Icons
Figure 11: Icon found in imageres.dll

Once the icon was linked to the correct resource, it’s icon was restored.

Figure 12: Icon Restored

On an English-language system, this completes the recovery. On other systems, the folder’s localized display name may still need to be restored. For example, on Simplified Chinese systems, the folder should display 保存的游戏 while keeping the actual folder name Saved Games.

4.2 Restoring a Localized Display Name

Searching for how to make a folder’s display name differ from its actual folder name, I found the following solution:

Figure 13: Search Results

Steps:

  1. Open the target folder in File Explorer.
  2. Click the View tab on the toolbar of the File Explorer window.
  3. Check the Hidden items box, then click Options.
  4. Click the View tab.
  5. Uncheck “Hide protected operating system files”, then click Yes and OK to confirm change.
Figure 14: Show Hidden Items
Figure 15: Unhide Protected Operating System Files

A desktop.ini file now appears inside the Saved Games folder.

Figure 16: The desktop.ini File

Step 6: Open it in Notepad.
We can see the IconResource entry is pointing to imageres.dll, which is the icon we restored previously.

Figure 17: Content of desktop.ini

Following the guide, I added the following line to desktop.ini (Figure 18):

LocalizedResourceName=保存的游戏
Figure 18: Editing the Display Name

After saving, however, the name appeared as garbled text (Figure 19). English displayed correctly while the Chinese characters turned into mojibake, indicating that the file encoding was wrong.

Figure 19: Display Name Turned into Mojibake

Method 1: Change the File Encoding1

The bottom-right corner of Notepad showed the current encoding as UTF-8, but desktop.ini should be saved as UTF-16 LE.

Figure 20: Notepad’s Default Encoding Method

To avoid garbling the Chinese name, enter it and then click File > Save As.

Figure 21: Save As

Set Save as type to All Files (*.*) and Encoding to UTF-16 LE, then save and overwrite the original file.

Figure 22: Changing the Encoding Method

A moment later, the display name was restored.

Figure 23: Saved Games Restored

Method 2: Reference a Resource Index

Instead of changing the encoding, you can also reference a resource index. The index points to a localized string inside shell32.dll file, which resolves to the display name according to your Windows display language.

For example, Figure 24 shows the LocalizedResourceName entry in the original desktop.ini file of the Videos folder is pointing to the resource in shell32.dll with the index -21791.

Figure 24: Where the Videos Display Name Comes From

I thus started to looking for name resource indices inside shell32.dll , but the results covered mainly icon resources instead of name resources.

Then, I turned to AI for help, but ChatGPT gave me fabricated answers .

When I asked how to inspect the contents of shell32.dll, ChatGPT recommended Visual Studio.

Figure 25: Asking How to Inspect shell32.dll

With no programming background, I mistakenly downloaded Visual Studio Code instead. It became my first encounter with an IDE. Later, when my professor noticed I was doing assignments in VSCode rather than Jupyter and asked why, I just pulled up this article .

Figure 26: VSCode and Visual Studio

Following ChatGPT’s instructions, I created a new solution in Visual Studio and loaded C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll to view its resource directory.

Figure 27: AI’s Instructions
Figure 28: Interface of Visual Studio

Visual Studio showed only the structure of the resource directory, not the actual entry indices. Since shell32.dll is very large, checking every entry by hand was not realistic.

In the end, I compared the desktop.ini file with one from another computer that hadn’t be modified. The correct resource index turned out to be -21814 — just four numbers away from the -21810 I had tried earlier. I might have found it with a few more guesses .

I added the following line to the desktop.ini in the Saved Games folder:

LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21814
Figure 29: After the Change

More resource indices of display names and icons for common shell folders are listed in Table 1.

Saved Games shell folder is finally fully restored!

Figure 30: Saved Games Restored

So far, both the icon and the display name were restored to their defaults.

Figure 31: Default Icon Restored

Lesson Learned: When moving a shell folder, change only the drive letter in the path. Do not set the bare root directory as the destination.

Figure 32: Moving a Shell Folder: Change Only the Drive Letter

Appendix: Resource Indices for Shell Folders

Use the icon resource index to restore a folder’s icon (needed on every system):

IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,<IconResource index>

If your Windows display language gives the folder a localized name (see Restoring a Localized Display Name), also set the name resource index. It points to a localized string in shell32.dll, so the same number resolves to whatever your system language is:

LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,<NameResource index>

For example, for the Pictures folder:

Pictures\desktop.ini
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21779
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-113

Note: the display-name resources for Contacts and 3D Objects come from other DLL files, not shell32.dll (see Footnotes).

Table 1: Resource Indices for Shell Folders
Folder Name Resource Indices2 Icon Resource Indices3
桌面 (Desktop) -21769 -183
文档 (Documents) -21770 -112
图片 (Pictures) -21779 -113
音乐 (Music) -21790 -108
视频 (Videos) -21791 -189
下载 (Downloads) -21798 -184
搜索 (Searches) -9031 -18
链接 (Links) -21810 -185
收藏夹 (Favorites) -21796 -115
保存的游戏 (Saved Games) -21814 -177
联系人 (Contacts) wab32res.dll, -101004 -181
3D对象 (3D Objects) windows.storage.dll, -218255 -198

>> View More Original desktop.ini Contents

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Footnotes

  1. Added June 16, 2026↩︎

  2. Unless marked otherwise, name resources come from @%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,<index>.↩︎

  3. Icon resources come from %SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,<index>.↩︎

  4. The Contacts name resource comes from @%CommonProgramFiles%\system\wab32res.dll,-10100.↩︎

  5. The 3D Objects name resource comes from @%SystemRoot%\system32\windows.storage.dll,-21825.↩︎