Alternate Directory name in C:\Users

Question

I use SecureCRT on 2 computers. I have the configuration stored in a Dropbox folder. However this causes some problems because my username isn't the same on both machines. Is there a way, without renaming the account, to have the user directory available under the alternate name, as you would be able to do on a unix system using a symlink?

Answer 1

Yes, use a symlink.

mklink /d C:\Users\Alternate Real

^{(note: the syntax is mklink <link> <target> which is different from ln -s <target> <link>)}

Symlinks are supported as of Windows Vista, and behave pretty much the same way as in Unix, with the exception that there can be "file" symlinks (mklink) and "directory" symlinks (mklink/d).

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Older Windows NT versions, which don't have symlinks, still support directory junctions (mklink /j or junction) – the major differences are that junctions only work with directories, and always point to an absolute path.

Both kinds of links require a NTFS filesystem.