Ah yes .. I must have overlooked that info. It was even mentioned in the windows developer blog [post](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/#Uv79W...) that sparked my fiddling around behaviour. It is basically about the change from *admin elevation required* into *need to enable "developer mode"* or *add a certain flag when calling the c++ API* in order to use the symbolic links.
@eht16 The commands used in my 1st post are based on recently introduced "Windows Management Framework" PowerShell CmdLets described in the [msdn docs](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/wmf/5.0/feedback_symbolic). Those cmdLets could work on Windows 7 but require some extra package installation (see *installation details* section on that webpage). The command ``mklink`` should work in your situation.