I've read this post and for all other users the symlinks when pulled down appear as plain text files under Windows EXCEPT for me. I thought it may have something to do with the fact that others when using sourcetree or git-bash, don't start with 'administrator' elevated rights but tried to clone to another working directory and this test proved otherwise (and also did 'git init' then set config.core.symlinks to 'true' before cloning which also didn't work)
Any suggestions on other tests I should try or even interrogate on the git remote repository which we host internally on a linux server and don't have access to.
