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Missing Pictures folder in Win11

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skyglider

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A new mini PC that I just got came with win11 Pro.
Ver: 21H2, Build: 22000.282

Examining the users path, here's what I see:

C:\Users\UserName
.... Documents
.... Music
.... Video

I don't see a "Pictures" folder. Is that missing in Win11 Pro?
 
skyglider said:
A new mini PC that I just got came with win11 Pro.
Ver: 21H2, Build: 22000.282

Examining the users path, here's what I see:

C:\Users\UserName
.... Documents
.... Music
.... Video

I don't see a "Pictures" folder. Is that missing in Win11 Pro?
Click to expand...
Can't you just create it? in Win10 I can create whatever I like in there.
 
Last edited:
skyglider said:
A new mini PC that I just got came with win11 Pro.
Ver: 21H2, Build: 22000.282

Examining the users path, here's what I see:

C:\Users\UserName
.... Documents
.... Music
.... Video

I don't see a "Pictures" folder. Is that missing in Win11 Pro?
Click to expand...
Looks like it might be in your case, but who uses those default folders anyway?

It’s far more logical to store data on a separate drive.

BTW, the C:\ Users\UserName path reminds me of the Windows practice of allowing multiple users. It is usually more trouble than it’s worth and should be dropped.
 
LynniePad said:
BTW, the C:\ Users\UserName path reminds me of the Windows practice of allowing multiple users. It is usually more trouble than it’s worth and should be dropped.
Click to expand...
You don’t maintain an account with admin credentials that’s separate from the one you use for day-to-day computing tasks? That’s two accounts right there.

Even setting that aside along with business use, I know multiple people myself that have computers in a home environment which multiple people log into with their own accounts. A situation that works just fine for them.
 
LynniePad said:
BTW, the C:\ Users\UserName path reminds me of the Windows practice of allowing multiple users. It is usually more trouble than it’s worth and should be dropped.
Click to expand...
Quite so! Mind you, I have defined my pet cockatoo as a co-administrator which is useful sometimes in problem solving (he lets me log on using his name and password). He looks after checking the parity bits at startup. If you know what that means you must be as old as I am.

He's pretty good with Android as well.

Lesser sulphur crested cockatoo; Motorola G8; Nik D750; 28-105mm; SB400 + SB25
Lesser sulphur crested cockatoo; Motorola G8; Nik D750; 28-105mm; SB400 + SB25

;-)
 
LynniePad said:
skyglider said:
A new mini PC that I just got came with win11 Pro.
Ver: 21H2, Build: 22000.282

Examining the users path, here's what I see:

C:\Users\UserName
.... Documents
.... Music
.... Video

I don't see a "Pictures" folder. Is that missing in Win11 Pro?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Where ya gonna keep your Apple Photos Library? ;-)
LynniePad said:
Looks like it might be in your case, but who uses those default folders anyway?

It’s far more logical to store data on a separate drive.
Click to expand...
That made sense when SSDs were high priced, but now that even 2TB is reasonable, it seems pointless to have multiple drives. (Except Windows is poorly designed for single drive, due to mixture of system and user data in the folder hierarchy.)
LynniePad said:
BTW, the C:\ Users\UserName path reminds me of the Windows practice of allowing multiple users. It is usually more trouble than it’s worth and should be dropped.
Click to expand...
Really? I remember is being awful in the olden days of XP, especially for iTunes, but still true?
 
Last edited:
I didn't pay a lot of attention when I set up my new PC and need to review the file structure. So Pictures shows up when I go to file Explorer now, but I've populated it some and it's actually under Users and then under One Drive. I didn't have to create it but took a while to find it.
 
I can't explain why it's absent, but for me, Pictures isn't just a folder. It's a Library, like Documents.
 
Billiam29 said:
LynniePad said:
BTW, the C:\ Users\UserName path reminds me of the Windows practice of allowing multiple users. It is usually more trouble than it’s worth and should be dropped.
Click to expand...
You don’t maintain an account with admin credentials that’s separate from the one you use for day-to-day computing tasks? That’s two accounts right there.
Click to expand...
I was referring to locations for data storage.
 
David Lal said:
skyglider said:
A new mini PC that I just got came with win11 Pro.
Ver: 21H2, Build: 22000.282

Examining the users path, here's what I see:

C:\Users\UserName
.... Documents
.... Music
.... Video

I don't see a "Pictures" folder. Is that missing in Win11 Pro?
Click to expand...
Can't you just create it? in Win10 I can create whatever I like in there.
Click to expand...
Yes I could create it.

But with further Googling, I read that a later Win11 upgrade to build 22557 put the pictures folder back. The strange thing is that my Win11 Pro says that it is up to date. No option to upgrade to build 22557. Maybe that's a beta version not released to the public yet.

My main concern was that if the Pictures folder was missing, then it might be an indication of something else awry in my version of Win11. Every previous version of Windows that I've used never had a major folder missing.

Mainly asking folks here running Win11 whether the Pictures folder is missing in the User's path, or if that's how their Win11 is.

Thanks.
 
LynniePad said:
skyglider said:
A new mini PC that I just got came with win11 Pro.
Ver: 21H2, Build: 22000.282

Examining the users path, here's what I see:

C:\Users\UserName
.... Documents
.... Music
.... Video

I don't see a "Pictures" folder. Is that missing in Win11 Pro?
Click to expand...
Looks like it might be in your case, but who uses those default folders anyway?

It’s far more logical to store data on a separate drive.

BTW, the C:\ Users\UserName path reminds me of the Windows practice of allowing multiple users. It is usually more trouble than it’s worth and should be dropped.
Click to expand...
I normally only have Windows OS and installed programs on my C drive and all data on a D drive.

But for this mini PC, I'm only going to use it for security purposes so the 500GB SSD will be fine for me. I'll store a minimal amount of data in the standard Windows folders in the C partition, on this mini PC only.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Craig Gillette said:
I didn't pay a lot of attention when I set up my new PC and need to review the file structure. So Pictures shows up when I go to file Explorer now, but I've populated it some and it's actually under Users and then under One Drive. I didn't have to create it but took a while to find it.
Click to expand...
Thanks much for taking the time to see if your Win11 has a Pictures folder. Where did you eventually find your Pictures folder?

I removed One Drive on my new Win11 mini PC, ... because on my Win10 tower PC, One Drive was holding giga-bytes of redundant data needlessly. And I wasn't even using One Drive. It just happened automagically. So I removed One Drive on my Win10 Tower PC, and in concert, removed One Drive from my new Win11 PC.

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
BobKnDP said:
I can't explain why it's absent, but for me, Pictures isn't just a folder. It's a Library, like Documents.
Click to expand...
Thanks much Bob for checking. Your findings indicate that it is a common problem in Win11 that the Pictures folder can be missing.
 
I don't know that I remember exactly. I think I found it when dealing with moving my Lightroom files to the new PC. The Lightroom Library and/or Import functions showed it, if I recall correctly.
 
skyglider said:
BobKnDP said:
I can't explain why it's absent, but for me, Pictures isn't just a folder. It's a Library, like Documents.
Click to expand...
Thanks much Bob for checking. Your findings indicate that it is a common problem in Win11 that the Pictures folder can be missing.
Click to expand...
Sorry that I was unclear.

It's present for me.

The point was that it's a library, not just a generic folder.
 
skyglider said:
I normally only have Windows OS and installed programs on my C drive and all data on a D drive.

But for this mini PC, I'm only going to use it for security purposes so the 500GB SSD will be fine for me. I'll store a minimal amount of data in the standard Windows folders in the C partition, on this mini PC only.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a reasonable plan. When I’m travelling, I also save a small numbers of Pictures and Documents to those default folders on laptops. Back home, I transfer them to shared drives on my main computers, and these are accessible to all the other users.

Both my installations of Windows 11 (Home 64) are upgrades from Windows 10 and have the the full complement of User Folders. I don’t use them, except for incidental use mentioned above. There’s nothing special about those folders, but I am reluctant to delete them. I never use MS Cloud, so I collapse this folder view.

I doubt that a “Check for Updates” would detect a missing folder and offer to fix that.

Back in the early days, there were no User Folders at all, then came “My Documents”, presumably to help those who were unable to create their own folders.
 
Last edited:
Craig Gillette said:
I don't know that I remember exactly. I think I found it when dealing with moving my Lightroom files to the new PC. The Lightroom Library and/or Import functions showed it, if I recall correctly.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply.
 
BobKnDP said:
skyglider said:
BobKnDP said:
I can't explain why it's absent, but for me, Pictures isn't just a folder. It's a Library, like Documents.
Click to expand...
Thanks much Bob for checking. Your findings indicate that it is a common problem in Win11 that the Pictures folder can be missing.
Click to expand...
Sorry that I was unclear.

It's present for me.

The point was that it's a library, not just a generic folder.
Click to expand...
Never knew that Pictures is a library, not a folder, since I never stored data in the C drive until now. All of my data is normally stored in the D drive.

Learning that Pictures is a library is a huge help. Thanks!
 
LynniePad said:
skyglider said:
I normally only have Windows OS and installed programs on my C drive and all data on a D drive.

But for this mini PC, I'm only going to use it for security purposes so the 500GB SSD will be fine for me. I'll store a minimal amount of data in the standard Windows folders in the C partition, on this mini PC only.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a reasonable plan. When I’m travelling, I also save a small numbers of Pictures and Documents to those default folders on laptops. Back home, I transfer them to shared drives on my main computers, and these are accessible to all the other users.

Both my installations of Windows 11 (Home 64) are upgrades from Windows 10 and have the the full complement of User Folders. I don’t use them, except for incidental use mentioned above. There’s nothing special about those folders, but I am reluctant to delete them. I never use MS Cloud, so I collapse this folder view.

I doubt that a “Check for Updates” would detect a missing folder and offer to fix that.

Back in the early days, there were no User Folders at all, then came “My Documents”, presumably to help those who were unable to create their own folders.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing your procedures and info.
 
skyglider said:
Learning that Pictures is a library is a huge help. Thanks!
Click to expand...
To be frank, I don't know what a 'library' really is, shame on me! However, what I can say is that I don't use any of them. I prefer to be in total control over where and when my data are stored.

I'll have to do some Googling.
 
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