Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder Intended For Windows XP only If you're using Windows XP, you'll most likely find a My Pictures folder in your My Documents folder. Delete the folder, and it will appear the next time you start Windows. Delete it again, and Windows will create it again. Very annoying. Now, one might think that if you changed the location of My Pictures using TweakUI so that Windows would use another folder as the default in which to save image files, then that would take care of it. But, no - the My Pictures folder is apparently hard-coded into Windows, which means you'll need something more drastic to keep your My Documents folder relatively clutter-free. Here's how to do it: Open your My Documents folder. Assuming it's empty, delete the My Pictures folder (if you haven't done so already). Right-click in an empty area in My Documents, select New, and then Text Document. Rename the new New Text Document.txt file to My Pictures (without a filename extension). Note: if you don't see the .txt filename extension here, go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab, and turn off the Hide extensions for known file types option. Right-click your new My Pictures file, select Properties, and turn on the Read-only and Hidden options. Click OK when you're done. That's it! Since you can't have two files with the same name (or a folder and a file with the same name) in the same directory, Windows won't be able to create the My Pictures folder as long as the file exists. Written by: Annoyances.org Last updated: Saturday, February 14, 2004 Care to discuss this article with other Windows users? Select your operating system here, and click Continue to post your question. - Choose your OS -Windows 7Windows VistaWindows Server 2003Windows XPWindows 2000Windows MeWindows 98Windows 95 Previous discussions about this article: (open a message to see applicable responses, if any) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (Dan: Monday, February 23, 2004) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (DeanM: Saturday, February 28, 2004) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (Brian: Monday, April 26, 2004) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (Andrew Jarvis: Wednesday, June 9, 2004) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (Hugo Miura: Thursday, October 14, 2004) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (Paul: Monday, March 14, 2005) [Windows 98] Also seems to work well in Win 98 (Steve Holmes: Wednesday, March 16, 2005) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (n/a: Monday, December 26, 2005) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (mark: Sunday, September 3, 2006) [Windows XP] My Pictures Folder has a ton of system files...is this normal? (Randall57: Tuesday, May 15, 2007) [Windows XP] Comment about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (Raven: Friday, August 22, 2008) [Windows XP] Question about 'Stop Windows XP from creating the My Pictures folder' (ron nieckarz: Tuesday, December 16, 2008) Return to "Reducing Clutter"