Redirecting My Music to a network drive

I want to redirect the My Music Folder on a Windows XP or 2000 Pro system to a share on a network server. I’m not sure how to do this.

I know how to redirect My Documents and everything in it to a network share but I just want to redicred My Music, and have that share accesable by everyone on my network.

You’re throwing me off with “redirect”. Are you saying that you want to move the folder and then share it? Or do you just want to share it without moving it? :confused:

Use gpedit to redirect the folder to an existing share. The acl on the server will determine who can connect to the share.

Thats what I thought I had to do but I can’t find that option anywhere.

I’m running GPEDIT from the Active Directory Domain Controller.

Rather than having My Music be located at

\Documents and Settings\someuserprofile\My Documents\My Music

Which limits what music can be played by what machine my parents are using I would rather have all music on \server1\sharedmusic\ and have that appear as the My Music folder

Could you just make a shortcut on each desktop to the proper folder on the network drive so when anyone goes to access it it will go to \server\sharedmusic rather than specifying to \user\docs\music

or maybe I am misunderstanding the question.

Run the program TweakUI from Microsoft. Choose the option My Computer->Special Folders. Select My Music in the pull-down box. Press the Change Location button. You will probably need to map a drive first, because the tree control does not have a edit box to type “\server\share…”.

Versions of TweakUI exist for every version of Windows. Here is the XP version.

If for some reason you can’t map a drive we should be able to figure out the registry location using TweakUI and RegMon.

The answer is deceptively simple…

[ol]
[li]Open up Windows Explorer (this doesn’t work if you navigate via the desktop).[/li][li]Right click on the “My Documents” folder.[/li][li]Press the “Move” button, choose the place on your home network you want the files to go to, ensure the same path is in the target folder location, and press “OK”.[/li][/ol]

I forgot to mention… In step 2 above, choose “properties” after you right click on My Documents.

That would work if I wanted to move the entire My Documents folder which I don’t want to do. I want only My Music to be on the network drive.

Ok I used Tweak UI for Non Itanium Systems and set the location of My Music to be \Srv2\Music and I tried setting the location of Shared Music to \Srv2\Music but it keeps resetting it to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Music

When I log off then log back on and go to My Documents from the desktop and click on My Music it opens up C:\Documents and Settings\Emanuel Levy.LEVY.000\My Documents\My Music

As a sanity check, try setting your My Music to a local folder (e.g. temp), then log off and on. That will eliminate the network share from the picture. If that works, you can try mapping a drive instead of the \server\share link.

The problem with a shortcut is my Father will still try go to to My Documents then My Music to pick the music he wants to listen to because that is how he was taught in a class he went to. I tried making a shortcut on his desktop called Music and told him to click there but he still insits on doing it the way he was taught in the class he took at the local college.

This is where things get strage. According to the info in Tweak UI My Music is now set to

c:\Documents and settings\Emanuel Levy.Levy.000\Desktop\Musik

and Shared Music poinmts to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Music no matter how many times I ty to change that

Yet when I open My Music I’m put in

C:\Documents and Settings\Emanuel Levy.LEVY.000\My Documents\My Music

Don’t you wonder what the hell the Microsoft developers were thinking sometimes? I’m anxiously awaiting an answer to this one cause it’s a problem I’ve always had too.

Yep I’l love to know what they were thinking. I have one application that is hardcoded to my documents\mymusic that turns streaming audio into MP3’s This is a legal use but one of the reasons I need my music to be on a network connection