windows 7 - Non-English special folder names in Vista/Win7

Question

In non-english versions Windows Vista and Windows 7 the usual special folders (such as the "My documents" folder) have dual naming: For instance "My documents" can be accessed (in german systems) via

C:UsersUsernameDocuments

But is displayed (in explorer and file choosing dialogs) as

C:BenutzerUsernameEigene Dokumente

In my (C#) application, I would like to display the second form but need to use the first one internally. So I'm looking for some function to convert e.g. the result of Environment.GetFolderPath() (which is always the english name) to the localized form.

Since I do not know, how this feature is called (and my english is somehow limited), I don't even know how to google it.

Any hints are very appreciated!

Thanks Martin

Answer 1

Ok, after some more research, I found out myself: The concepts I was looking for were

• Junction points
• Desktop.ini using the (undocumented) LocalizedResourceName entry (only documented for Windows CE)

I will open up a separate question about a function for getting this "LocalizedResourceName" automatically (I do not want to look it up manually for each directory in my path...)