Application Saved File Not Appearing In File Explorer because of "VirtualStore"
There comes some situation when you are clueless what is happening. When this happened to me, I thought that I am surely affected by a virus or something.
The Situation
I saved a file through an application and by mistake I saved that under the installer folder which is under the program files folder of the Operating System.
After saving the file I checked for the file in that folder and I was shocked to see that the file and the subfolder I created were not there. I got worried and started searching for the file here and there thinking that I save the file to some other location by mistake and didn't notice.
Then I opened that application and tried using the 'Open File' feature of the application it was there. The folder was showing and the file was there under the folder. I copied the path and pasted the URL to an explorer and it threw an error. That was the time I was sure it's some kind of virus.
The Reason
This happens because of "VirtualStore". Programs and Applications are permitted to write to their "Program Files" folder for legacy reasons, but they do not have privileges to do so, so they get transparently redirected to "C:\Users\"User"\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)". This causes the files, an application saves to its "Program Files" folder, to appear there in that application(or other applications that have saved to the Program Files before), but not in Explorer.
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