Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10  

I would get a popup window, "you need a new app to open this". It made access to security settings impossible. Yes it had nothing to do with your moving user folder process. But the error would only go away if I didn't attempt the move users folder during install. Anyway I have since bought a new larger M.2 SSD (successful standard install) and I'll forgo moving my users folder. The SSD will just wear more than I wanted.
Thanks for your help and input during my 3 days of reinstalls and problems.

Hello everyone,

Great forum here. I've been reading it for a week solid as I try to solve a problem that I just can't seem to shake.

I was happily running what I thought was a legit copy of Win7x64 Ultimate. Turns out it isn't, but I had already installed the free Windows 10 Prox64 upgrade on another partition some time ago. However, I was still using the Win7 installation until just recently.

Now I'm trying to finish setting up my Win10 installation fully and make the switch permanent. Part of that process is taking the (mostly empty except for AppData) Users folders and move them to another partition on a second internal HD. I've been following the steps here, but when I run Sysprep, I get "A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine." I've googled around a bit but don't find anything that seems to match my problem.

The one thing I noticed was that the Method 2 video in the opening post has the

HTML Code:

<cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="wim:G:\sources\install.wim#Windows 10 Pro" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />

code that tells where the wim file is located. However, that bit of code is now missing from the text box for Method 1 step 2, and so are the corresponding instructions about modifying it. I've read through all the posts since late 2017 in this thread, but I didn't see anyone discussing that it disappeared, so I'm not really sure what to do. Could this bit of missing code be my problem, or is there some other issue? I have an installation CD that I made in my CD-drive, but I don't think it's being used for this operation based on the way the code is currently written. Also, there isn't an install.wim file on that CD, so I'm really not sure what to do about it.

Any help solving either of these problems would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all for your time.

I would like to have my profiles drive;

D:\Alowicious
D:\Cinderella
D:\Expialadocious
D:\Mickey

Which is how I have them now by manually editing my XP Registry after install. That's the way I've always done it back to Win95 but it's a very time consuming thing to do wroth with pitfalls and potential catastrophic mines.
However, this method only seems to accept;

D:\Users\Alowicious
D:\Users\Cinderella
D:\Users\Expialadocious
D:\Users\Mickey

Any reason this shouldn't work?

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
<settings pass="oobeSystem">
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<FolderLocations>
<ProfilesDirectory>P:\</ProfilesDirectory>
</FolderLocations>
</component>
</settings>
</unattend>

Note I want to put my profiles P:\</ProfilesDirectory>


Wow, looks like I asked this exact question the last time I changed the drive in my laptop...

Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10 - Page 23 - | Tutorials

I wonder if the answer changed

Kari said:

You can't, at least when using Sysprep to relocate user profiles. The profile folder must be named Users, and it must be on root of the drive where profiles will be relocated.

Kari

Thanks...

Second thought, will I have to move all the current profiles since their currently on the root and the new ones will be in the Users folder? I know it says to have no previous windows files but it seems they'll be in a different location???

This isn't working for me either, fyi... I have to use CTRL + SHFT + FN + F3 to get into audit mode. Just saying in case anyone runs into my same situation...

Anyway, I created the relocate.xml file and used my newly created H: drive for my user profiles. Nothing was on the partition which is what I mean by newly created, I used disk manager to create the partition and assign it the letter H:.

After the reboot it gets to where Cortona says, "Now let's see what's new". Then I get a screen that says, "Something went wrong" with an error in yellow that says, "OOBEEULA".

These results were consistent over three attempts, each time I got the same results. I finally loaded the OS without this step and it loaded just fine so there is something in this step that's causing the error.

This is my relocate file in case something's wrong with it...

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
<settings pass="oobeSystem">
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<FolderLocations>
<ProfilesDirectory>H:\Users\</ProfilesDirectory>
</FolderLocations>
</component>
</settings>
</unattend>