Is there an easy way to move the user folder off the system drive? I understand the concept of virtual folders, but when i drag and drop a file from my desktop to my "Matthew" folder i have displayed on the desktop, it goes to c:\Users\Matthew I want my Users folder on my E:\ drive (e:\users\matthew) Even better would be if i could have "c:\users" just be "e:\"

 Anybody have any ideas?

If you want to re-direct all your user data folders in one shot, you essentially have two options:

1. You can use unattend.xml (i beleive there is a blog post on this) during setup to define exactly where you want your Profile 'Users' directory to be created. All new profiles will be created at that location.

 2. You can also indivudually redirect all your profile folders using the follwoign method if you already ahve the OS installed. However one hting to point out is that once you have the OS installed, you cannot move the root profiel folder, i.e. Users directory or the username folder itself.

1. Go to the Start>Username folder.

2.  Select all the folders in the explorer window you want to move/re-direct.

3. Cut-paste them to the new location of your chosing.  

 This will also redirect all the folders to the new location and update the registry entries for them as well in a manner similar to the manual redirection via the locations tab as suggested above.

PS... There are some known bugs in this area in the RC1 bilds where this may fail in some cases for the Documents, Desktop and Links folder. These bugs have already been fixed for the Windows Vista RTM builds.

Hope this helps. 

Anshul

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Anshul Rawat | Program Manager | Windows Shell

Thanks! Thats great. I plan on reinstalling vista from the ground up since my c drive is failing anyway.

Actually, there IS a way to move existing profiles and the profiles root directory, although I'm sure it's unsupported, use at your own risk, etc.

The key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList includes a value for the ProfilesDirectory that points to the root profile directory (i.e. %SystemDrive%\Users), and each subkey represents the location of a single profile, identified by account SID. User profiles don't all have to be under the root profile directory, but the Default and All Users profiles do. Newly copied profiles (either from default or roaming) go into the root profile directory.

Don't try to move a profile that's in use. Changes to the profile root directory only take effect properly after reboot.

Even if you move the profile, there MIGHT be paths that lead to the old directory (although this isn't supposed to be happening to support roaming profiles correctly; romaing profiles may be located anywhere when cached on the client machines).

There are blogs available on unattend.xml but no details on how to move where the 'users' folder is located. Apparently it involves downloading a kit from connect, but i do not have a subscription. Any "quick and easy" solutions?

 I understand the idea but im not a programer nor can i download the kit.

Have you done this successfully?

Yes, many times.

Although this is even less recommended, I've also shared a profile between different accounts by assigning the same directory to both and giving them both access. I've done this to 'upgrade' a local account to a domain account without making a seperate copy of the profile or losing the local account.

I haven't had any problems with either process once completed, but I also know and accept the risks of these unsupported operations. I'm sure that I haven't done the spectrum of testing that a supported procedure has.

Wow. That registry trick works awesome. Thats exactly what i needed. Now my e:\ drive has Users, Documents, Images, Videos, Music, and Downloads folders, with the virtual folders under 'e:\Users\Matthew' and 'e:\Users\Ashley' linking back out to thier respective folder in the root directory (e:\)

All this so when my 'Matthew' folder is displayed on the desktop, i can drag and drop files to it and they physically reside at e:\Users\Matthew. From there further sorting into the Virtual folders is easy.

We provide an unattend setting (Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup | FolderLocations | ProfilesDirectory) for doing exactly this! I would recommend applying this setting during a clean install. But beware - if you move the Users folder to a location other than the system volume, upgrades will be blocked!!!

baslam:

if you move the Users folder to a location other than the system volume, upgrades will be blocked!!!

Could you please provide a link to the full details on this issue?

Is there something special to do to be able to relocate the Users folder in an x64 installation (core2duo) ? I can sucessfully move the folder when choosing a 32bits install, but it doesn't work when doing a 64 bits install. I tried changing the processorArchitecture value, without any success.

 Any idea?

hey guys, Ok I got it all sorted out last night and now everything is working just great. You dont need and registry hacks or an un-attended install to do it. Go to this link and follow the instructions. It takes 5 minutes and your on your way...cheers

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1371

The EdBott.com blog advice doesn't really re-locate the user folder. It only relocates some of the user subfolders (Documents, Music, etc.) It doesn't work for the hidden user subfolders (like AppData) at all. And it doesn't move the root folder for the user, so if you click on the username on the Start menu, you're still taken to the C:\users\username folder.

The same goes for cutting and pasting user subfolders, I believe, as was mentioned in an eariler post.

So far, it looks like the registry change is the way to go. BTW, here is the microsoft KB article that documents that registry hack:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236621

 

Upgrades blocked link: 

Here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929831

Personally I prefer the option of a clean install each time (using WAIK), so not being able to upgrade to another version of Vista or later system is not an issue for me. Obviously with the exception of the server.

 

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=192697

 

Posted April 7, 2007

Here lies my experience moving my entire User Profile folder structure, including Default, Public, and any local users.

In my search for a solution, the only two easy ways I found to move the user profile directory locations from the system drive is to

1. Set the User Profile folder during setup using an unattended install file.
2. Move the individual folders inside your user profile, which can be done using explorer (which will update the registry keys HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders).

However, this was not good enough for me, I wanted my actual user profile folder to be moved to a seperate partition/volume, including registry settings.  I discovered that it is not actually that hard, provided you’re comfortable with mass replacing registry keys and values.

Here is how I moved my user profile location.  Please note that I wanted all of the profiles moved, included Public and Default, so some of these steps can be skipped if you do not want that:

1. Make sure you have a complete backup of your system!
2. Copy the original Default Profile directory to the new location (e.g. from C:\Users\Default to D:\Users\Default).
3. Copy the original Public Profile directory to the new location (e.g. from C:\Users\Public to D:\Users\Public).
4. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.
5. Change the value of the Default key to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users\Default).
6. Change the value of the Public key to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users\Public).
7. Change the value of the ProfilesDirectory to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users).
8. At this point, you need to restart and log back in as a different user that has never logged in before and therefore does not have a profile created.  In my case, the Administrator user had never logged in before so I enabled it so that Administrator could log in and used that.  You can enable Administrator login by loading Computer Management and then go to User Accounts, edit the properties for Administrator, and then uncheck Disable Login.
9. After logging in for the first time with the new user account, you will see “Creating Desktop” and other things like that while Windows is creating your profile.  Note that the new profile should be created in the new location.
10. After logging in, try to close as many applications as possible.  This will prevent most files from being locked so that you cannot copy them.
11. Copy the entire original user profiles folder from the original location to the new location (e.g. C:\Users\* to D:\Users\).  (See next step after copy starts).
12. There are a few things to note during this copy.  There were thousands of .TMP files that were locked and would not copy.  I just skipped these files.  I held down Alt-S so that I could see all of the skipped files and make sure that there were only .TMP files being skipped.  Yes, this took a little while, but at least I was confident that I got all of my files copied.  This process could probably be made easier using the command prompt or powershell.
13. If, in your case, there are some files that will not copy, you can run procexp.exe, which is file provided by sysinternals.  Then do a Find Handle and search for part of the filename.  procexp will tell you which programs are locking the file.  As long as you closed as many programs as you could, though, this should not happen.
14. Find and download a program that will do a Search & Replace on the registry.  I will not suggest one because I did not find one single program that worked perfectly.  I ended up downloading a few different freeware applications and using all of them.
15. Using the Registry Search & Replace program, do a search for the original user profile folder and replace it with the new user profile folder (e.g. search for “C:\Users” and replace with “D:\Users”.  Note that some of the applications I used would only change values and not key names.  However, the keys that needed to be changed were all related to MuiCache.  I do not know if these actually need to be updated.  I did just to make sure.
16. Log out.  Log back in with the same user.  Repeat step 14 until there is nothing left to replace.  The reason for this step is that on logout, some programs seem to update the registry using the old user profile path.
17. Run regedit.exe and do a search for the original user profile path and make sure it does not exist.  The reason for this step is because (as noted in step 13), I did not trust any of the Registry Search & Replace programs I used.  I ended up needing to update about a dozen of the keys and values manually, since the search & replace missed them.
18. So that you can easily find programs that do not use the registry and hard-coded profile paths, rename your original profile folder (e.g. rename C:\Users to C:\~Users).
19. Log out. Log back in as your usual user.  Everything should be working correctly except for programs that use a “hardcoded” user profile location.
20. There are two easy methods that can be used to find programs that use a “hardcoded” profile location and are still looking for the original user profile path.  You can use the procexp.exe trick mentioned above and search for handles in the original profile location.  You can also monitor the oringal profile location to see if any new folders or files were created.  For example, in my case, FolderShare created some folders and files in the directory C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\FolderShare\.  So, I updated the FolderShare settings to point to the different path and then deleted the C:\Users directory (note that C:\~Users still existed as a backup).
21. Since you are now confident that all of your data has been moved (right??????), you can deleted the backup of the original user profile location (e.g. C:\~Users).

http://joshmouch.wordpress.com/

http://joshmouch.wordpress.com/

This procedure worked flawlessly for me.  Everything user-related is now on a completely different volume, and I can sleep a little better at night!

Please reply to my email. I have several ideas on improving your process.
For step 14:  Use Resplendence Registry Manager v5.50
Email me for a copy.

Jay

MRGCAV@gmail.com 

 

@MRGCAV:

 Does this method also retain the security and privacy settings of each user's folder?  IE, non-admin users cannot view the contents of other users' profiles?

 Great write up, btw!