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I have reinstalled my computer with Windows 7, and Eclipse 3.5.1 (Galileo).

The weird thing is that I can not see any files that Eclipse produces. I can not find the workspace, can not find the files from the SVN after check out.

It seems like Windows 7 can not read the files produced by Eclipse ... wierd

What could be the reason for this?

Peter Mortensen
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special0ne
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  • You should be able to find your project under the workspace, hence my suggestion to launch your eclipse with the `-showlocation` option. – VonC Dec 09 '09 at 12:30

2 Answers2

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Where do you have Eclipse installed? Where is your workspace?

In Windows 7 (Vista, actually), a lot of security policies that existed only on paper in earlier versions of Windows, are now actually enforced by the operating system. For example, according to Microsoft's documentation, it has been pretty much illegal to write to C:\Program Files for decades now, but if you actually tried it, it still worked. Not anymore. As of Vista, C:\Program Files is off-limits.

However, in order not to break existing (broken) applications, Microsoft introduced filesystem virtualization. If an application tries to write to C:\Program Files, it gets silently redirected to C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files. So, this specific application sees all the files it created or changed in C:\Program Files, but other applications, and this includes the Explorer, see only the unchanged / empty directory.

This does not just apply to C:\Program Files but also to other system directories as well. Also, it applies to system parts of the registry, like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE for example.

In order to sidestep all of this, I simply installed my copy of Eclipse in %LocalAppData%\eclipse (that's C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\eclipse) and created my workspace in %AppData%\eclipse (that's C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Roaming\eclipse). That Just Works™.

Jörg W Mittag
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  • Just out of curiosity: did you actually find the "vanished" files somewhere in `%LocalAppData%\VirtualStore` ? – Jörg W Mittag Dec 11 '09 at 10:09
  • I'd give this +10 if I could. Saved me a lot of work trying to figure out why plugins wouldn't install properly. – Knut Eldhuset Jan 01 '10 at 12:05
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    This turned out to be my problem with trying to install plugins. They wouldn't show up because windows would redirect it, and eclipse couldn't find them at runtime. Though it would still show them as installed. – davenpcj Oct 22 '11 at 23:14
  • Well, Jörg, I am glad this "just works" for you. But I too am running Windows 7, and it does not work for me. On the contrary: the Eclipse install put the sdk directory in AppData\Local\eclipse\..., and now most Eclipse file open dialogs cannot display AppData at all. I can see it in Cygwin, but not in Eclipse or even Windows' own file explorer. Even though my username has administrative privileges. – Matt J. Jul 20 '13 at 01:24
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You can launch eclipse with the -showlocation option, which will display the path of the workspace in the title bar.
(See this eclipse.ini for instance)

From there, you can check if you find that workspace, and its eclipse projects within it.

You can also configure your shortcut:

enter image description here

Community
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VonC
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  • hi, thanks for you response, i don't understand how it relates to my question... the eclipse application runs but when i build work space it creates, and the projects are unseen to the windows 7 explorer. i know where the files are located, it is just i cannot find them there .... wierd – special0ne Dec 09 '09 at 12:22