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First of all, welcome to the site. Forgive the lack of greets, but many of the moderators are slacking this week. I'm currently at the beach with my fam.
I haven't tried the rx myself although I have certainly had systems setup in a similiar fashion before. It's a great recipe.
Next week when I get back to the mothership, I'll fire you off a new amazon gift certificate to thank you for your awesome work.
McHenry is actually working on some author-specific tech-recipes perks as we speak as well.
Once again, welcome to techrx. PM me if I can be of any service to you.
I only hope publishing my recipe doesn't lead Microsoft to block this in the future. That is, unless they make an official way to relocate the C:Documents and Settings data if the user so chooses.
Q
In all honesty I just used your website to find out how to do this - but since nobody has posted to say THANKS and to report that this technique WORKED FREAKING PERFECTLY and I HAD NO PROBLEMS I thought I'd take the time to sign up and...well...report it ;)
I'll probably never post here again, but again thanks for the help and to all you guys not brave enough to take the plunge - take my word for it - it works. And it works good.
I want to have all the docs and settings run off it but have found that microsoft doesn't want us to.
I have seen several ways of doing this which have failed.
I think this way works - but i haven't done the final 'delete'
I just have one question.....
What happens to the 'all users' profile?
I have copied the 'all users' docs over to the new drive - but is there a profile path?
LEt me know your thoughts and then I'll do the 'delete' and let you know
Scott
what do I do?
Everything else worked.....thanks for all you help!
Scott
Problem1.
In my case, the profile I wanted to move was active and also the administrator, so its NTUSER.DAT file could not be moved.
Solution. in ControlPanel/UserAccounts, create a new user 'TempAdmin' with Administrator rights. Then reboot, log in as TempAdmin and copy the profile to its required new location.
Problem2.
Using Regedit in Step1, put the new path into the registry, so the Step2 reboot went to the new location, found nothing, and created a default load of user settings.
Solution.
Either end Step1 with the original registry values re-instated and an external copy of the revised key.
OR, use the separate Admin account to do the copying before step 1
When looking at the registry file it is in Hexadecimal format.
I tried changing the path before saving and then delete from SID down.
I copied the entire Documents and Settings folder.
You saw to move the profile, but do you mean to create a documents and setting folder and put it in that, or just put the profile directly in the drive.
Some things are saved in all users or administrator, so I would think I would need to copy the entire documents and settings folder.
I actually got it to work once.
I am doing a fresh install and was experimenting.
I tried to move it to another drive without success.
I did a restore to original, but now when copying, I get a "can't move NTuser" error
The path stays, but when logging in, it doesn't go to that path.
Any Ideas what I am doing wrong?
I need to know how to get it to work well in case I actually need to reinstall operating system.
Thanks,
Duane
Here is a relatively simple way of achieving the move whilst avoiding the above problems, & without making any changes to the registry, which has it's attendant dangers. The first is overcome by booting from a recovery disc into a pre-install environment. The second by keeping the "Documents and Settings" folder on the system volume & mounting the partition or drive of the new location onto it. This fools Windows into thinking the folder hasn't been moved & should be transparent to applications in general.
It's been tested using XP Pro + SP3 although should work with other XP variants. Having a recovery disc is useful anyway, see here http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ for how to do this using BartPE builder & XPE plug-in (both free). Booting this way means that none of the normal user accounts are in use by Windows so you will be free to copy all files at once without Windows complaining.
So boot from the recovery disc, changing BIOS if necessary to achieve CD boot. To save altering BIOS again make sure secondary boot device is set to hard disc.
It takes a while but you should eventually see a BartPE desktop with familar Windows icons & autohide Start bar at the top. Click on My Computer & check you can see the system drive (assume it's C:/) plus the drive/partition you want to re-locate Documents and Settings to. Open C: drive to view & select Tools/Folder Options/View tab. Select View hidden files radio button & untick hide System files & Folders. You will get a warning as soon as you do this but just hit Yes, Apply & Ok. Open "Document and Settings" folder, select all & copy to your intended drive/partition. Note that copying them to a folder is not an option, they must be in the location root. For this reason it may be best to use a dedicated, empty partition/drive, although I used a backup partition holding several other files already. Just make sure that you respect the folders you copy across & that there are none with the same name already. The folders involved will be:
Administrator
All Users
Default User (hidden)
LocalService (hidden system file)
NetworkService (hidden system file)
User folder(s) named after each user account you set up (there will be at least one that you set up on installation)
Having copied the full contents (minimum six folders), change the name of "Documents and Settings" folder on your system drive to say "My Stuff" - this will be a backup which could be deleted later when all is tested & proven. Create new folder on system drive & rename it "Documents and Settings", this must remain empty.
Go to Start/Control panel, open “Administrator Tools”. Select “Computer Management” and go into the “Disk Management” item. All your drives & partitions should be listed so right-click on the partition you are going to be using for re-location & select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…” from the menu. In the new dialog box click the “Add” button. Another dialog box will open, browse to your newly created "Documents and Settings” folder and click OK.
Exit & open your new "Documents and Settings" folder. Although this won't appear with drive icon until you reboot, you should see the full contents of the drive/partition you moved the Documents and Settings folders to.
If all ok, re-boot normally removing the recovery disc first. The "Documents & Settings" folder on your system drive will now have a drive icon & be mounted with the drive/partition you copied your Documents and Settings to.
Microsoft suggest modifying silent install file to change location on new installation or worse still changing all references to Documents and Settings folder in the registry on a live system. Don't be tempted to do the latter for the reasons above.
Although not tested I believe the "Program Files" folder could be moved in the same transparent way. This would allow easy backing up & once de-fragged, the system drive with just rarely modified system files on it, would remain so for some time speeding up your system.
Good luck! - Richard :)
Sharon
That's an interesting technique RicharHula. I've tried to get BartPE working in the past but w/o success. So I use Acronis to make images instead of messing around with BartPE.
For the one or more people who posted that they can't move their settings, you need to go back and carefully read my tip. You DON'T MOVE the folder, you COPY it. Then, when the process is fully completed, everything checks out and you have successful switched to the new location, then you should be able to DELETE the original folder. If you can't do this, then you mucked something up. Restore and start over.
I can't see the point in making the registry changes, exporting them, then logging in as Administrator and re-importing them again?
I had to use explorer to hide the two system folders in Documents and Settings. the only really wierd thing was that when I rebooted, Notepad opened displaying the contents of a file called desktop.ini. A quick search of the net for the contents of the file led me to the following MS support article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330132 .Followed the instructions and everything seems fine now. I have moved my home folder off the root drive in Linux anf it is very straightforward compared to this.
So if you don't want to do this over and over for every new user you create, you can change its value here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\ProfilesDirectory
I'd add one more number to Step 2 (#0.) those instructions:
Step 2
0. Create a new Admin User Account. Log out or your User Account and Log into the new Admin User Account.
1. Now ....
Was unable to continue with this solution.
Seems slicker, without having to mess around with the Registry (not an issue for me)
I'm about to clone my physical partitions to a VMimage with VMWare Converter, so I'm wondering if this technique would be portable to the VM, (making the Windows partition image much smaller).
Do you think this would work?
Would I be able to mount the Docs & Setts in the VM (or would there be a locking conflict?)
Everything Ghosted, so I'll try anyway, but would appreciate anyone's thoughts.
Cheers,
Rem
Please help