missing 'my documents' folder

a month ago i did something silly on my desktop. i don't remember exactly what i did, but the end result was that i lost my 'my documents' folder shortcut on my desktop. i know, i know, silly me. the weird thing was that, not only was it missing from my desktop, but also from explorer and the open and save dialog boxes of most apps. i ran across an application called TweakUI a few years back and thought that maybe it could help (it allows you to hide some icons that are on your desktop by default). i did a quick install only to find out that even it couldn't see the folder =( i decided i couldn't be bothered and just created a folder shortcut on my desktop. this worked for a couple of weeks, but i eventually got tired of having to navigate to the folder everytime i needed to do a save or open a file. (ahehe, lazy me =D)

after some serious googling, i found out that the display behavior of the my documents icon on the desktop was controlled by some value in the registry. to resolve the problem, all i had to do was fire up regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
'- Software
   '- Microsoft
      '- Windows
         '- CurrentVersion
            '- Explorer
               '- CLSID
                  '- {450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}
                     '- ShellFolder

i then needed to change the REG_DWORD value of Attributes from 0xf0500174 (hides the icon) to 0xf0400174 (displays the icon).

i hope you don't lose your my documents folder icon like i did, but if you do, then at least you'll have the benefit of my experience to bring it back =)