Moving the Public Folders to another drive under Windows 10

I'm asking this question on this site as I posted the same query on the Microsoft support forum and got, what I assume to be, a scam response to call a US number. I'm raising it in parallel to another one I raised to resolve an issue I have with Windows Media Player which continuously loses its library settings as I think the two problems may be related.

I installed a bootable SSD on my PC and remapped the existing HDD to hold just my data (I've called it my M: drive). Following one of numerous threads that I must have read, I eventually managed to work out how to move the location of the Public folders to the HDD - by running File explorer in safe mode and using the move location button under the location tab. That seemed to work well. However, I now notice that Windows seems to have recreated my Public folders on the C: drive. This time, if I boot into safe mode, there is no location tab on these folders to even try to replicate the process. I'm sure this is related to the problems I'm having with WMP - whereby it keeps resorting to using the public folders on the C: drive rather than the M: drive.

What process is likely to have recreated the public folders on the C: Drive? How can I stop it recurring?
How can I ensure that these folders on the C: drive are ignored on only the public folders on the M: drive are considered?

Thanks
BR

You can, but the Public directory can be a little tricky to move.

You will need to takeownership of it as well as a couple sub directories that will be owned by SYSTEM. Once you've taken ownership you will then need to grant your account full access recursively.
At that point you should be able to move the directory.
Last step, from an elevated command prompt run mklink /J C:\Users\Public M:\PathtoPublic

Optionally you can change the owner back to system

Going this route will allow the OS to still have the C:\Users\Public directory, but behind the scenes the data is stored on the other drive.

I suspect the culprit was Windows Media Player itself. I searched the registry for entries that still included entries referring to C:\Users\Public\Music and there were a number under the top level key for WMP. After I changed them (having down a backup first!), the problem seems to have resolved itself. WMP no longer keeps resetting the music library to these folders and I do not have to keep rebuilding its database every time I want to listen to some music.

Thanks for the responses.

PS, it is very concerning that Microsoft's community forum seems open to abuse from scammers. The question has to be asked why they are not doing anything to prevent this …

BR