Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10  


  1. HoggyDog
    Posts : 23
    Windows 10
       New #1320

    Any update on this since it's now 3+ years later? Thanks.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Berton said:
    This is what I get in the Properties panel of the Right-click any folder listed in C:\Users\USERNAME:
    Attachment 300800
    Might consider the Quick Access and Libraries items in File Explorer to be shortcuts to the actual folders.
    Thank you, Berton, but sadly (as I posted) I do not have a Location tab on ANY of my folders. Would you believe me if I posted a screenshot of me not having it? Googling around does not suggest any fix to restore the missing tab- almost all the articles I've found start from the assumption that I have a tab I simply do not have, hence the uselessness of everything I have found so far.

    And your last sentence is simply technobabble to me- I don't know what "Quick Access" is or how to invoke (or prevent) it, or how I might go about "considering the Libraries items in File Explorer" to be shortcuts to the actual folders- my experience is and has been (Win 7 as well as Win 10) that many Libraries icons have more than one folder "attached," which renders them useless to me since I am not able to share certain folders while still being able to share the children of "Public," but if I drop a file into the Documents Library "thing" I never know whether it's going to end up in Users\{myname}\(My) Documents or Users\Public\Documents. So I can't use the "Libraries."

    Win 10 is new to me as of 3 days ago (except for my laptop, which I haven't booted in over a year BECAUSE OF Windows 10, for which my hatred grows daily and borders on the pathological as I struggle with the simplest things that I did routinely and with ease in Windows 7.) Thanks for your response.
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  2. Berton
    Posts : 14,683
    Win10 Pro and Home, Win11 Pro and Home, Win7, Linux Mint
       New #1321

    The image I posted shows what a default install of Win10 provides. Looking in the Navigation pane of File Explorer lists Quick Access and maybe Libraries, I have Libraries turned off.
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  3. Kenajcrap
    Posts : 2
    Windows 10
       New #1322

    Updating from 1909 to 20H2 seems to have slightly broken my moved Users folder. Now `\Users` points to C:\Users, even though I moved the Users folder to D:, this seems like not a big deal until you consider that now \\MY-COMPUTET\Users cant be used to get files from my user folder over the network.

    I've tried doing Method 2 (pointing to D: again) after updating to see if this fixes it, but no luck.
    Something else I've noticed but cannot confirm if it already happened before is that %HOMEPATH% now returns an error saying "Windows can't find '\Users\[name of my user]'. Check the spelling and try again.". So Windows sorta knows where my user is (enough to log in and all of that) but doesn't seem to know where the Users folder is anymore.

    Any tips?
    Last edited by Kenajcrap; 28 Oct 2020 at 14:22. Reason: forgot quotation marks
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  4. ifive
    Posts : 9
    Windows 10 Pro x64
       New #1323

    It worked perfectly last time, 1909, iirc.

    This time, using 2009/20H2, it was a disaster. Several approaches Method One, Two, ..., nothing worked after starting Sysprep ending in a loop (Error moving Users, Reboot), therefore no screenshot.

    Last hope was going back a version since Relocation of the Users and the ProgramData directories to a drive other than the drive that has the Windows directory (09/08/2020) indicates, that MS has changed something breaking the working methods. For older versions see Method One.1 Windows 10 ISO Download, Option Five. I chose 2004/20H1 and it worked like a charm :)

    Please check it out, Kari and those who are doing this regularly.
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  5. Kari
    Posts : 17,661
    Windows 10 Pro
    Thread Starter
       New #1324

    ifive said:
    Please check it out, Kari and those who are doing this regularly.
    I did some tests today, testing both Method One and Method Two, both methods using Windows 10 version 20H2 and Insider dev channel's latest preview, build 21277.

    Had absolutely no problems in any of the tests, everything working perfectly and the Users folder completely moved to another drive.

    Kari
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  6. Kenajcrap
    Posts : 2
    Windows 10
       New #1325

    Kari said:
    I did some tests today, testing both Method One and Method Two, both methods using Windows 10 version 20H2 and Insider dev channel's latest preview, build 21277.

    Had absolutely no problems in any of the tests, everything working perfectly and the Users folder completely moved to another drive.

    Kari
    Could you confirm to me that stuff like \\COMPUTERNAME\Users can be used to access the moved Users folder? If so, I will probably reinstall windows to fix my setup, since it works normally except for accessing it from a network path.

    Thank you a lot for the tutorial and continued support, you are awesome.
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  7. lehmartin
    Posts : 1
    Windows 10
       New #1326

    ifive said:
    This time, using 2009/20H2, it was a disaster. Several approaches Method One, Two, ..., nothing worked after starting Sysprep ending in a loop (Error moving Users, Reboot), therefore no screenshot.
    Same here. Totally clean install, no other drive connected, Sysprep went into looping with showing error messages, see attached pictures. Bootloops and shows error again.


    Kari said:
    I did some tests today, testing both Method One and Method Two, both methods using Windows 10 version 20H2 and Insider dev channel's latest preview, build 21277.

    Had absolutely no problems in any of the tests, everything working perfectly and the Users folder completely moved to another drive.
    Maybe it's dependent on the hardware configuration? I thoroughly followed your tutorial and it did not work, several times. I even disconnected other drives that currently were not needed.

    Edit: Alright, it is indeed depending on hardware configuration.
    I'm running Windows on a 1 TB NVME SSD with 2 partitions (besides MSR/EFI/Recovery), one for the system itself (C:), one for software and games (D:). I have a second SSD, 500 GB via SATA, which I intended to use for user profiles (E:) using your method, Kali. Assigning correct drive letters and editing relocate.xml and the cmd commands accordingly, I could not move the user profiles folder to the SATA SSD. Disconnecting this SSD and instead moving the user profiles folder to the second partition on the NVME SSD works flawlessly, but that's not how I intended to set this up. Any idea what's going wrong?

    My hardware setup:
    - AMD Ryzen 3700X
    - GIGABYTE AORUS x570 Master
    - Crucial P1 1000 GB NVME
    - Crucial MX500 500 GB SATA

    - - - Updated - - -

    lehmartin said:
    Same here. Totally clean install, no other drive connected, Sysprep went into looping with showing error messages, see attached pictures. Bootloops and shows error again.
    [...]
    Maybe it's dependant on the hardware configuration? I thoroughly followed your tutorial and it did not work, several times. I even disconnected other drives that currently were not needed.

    Edit: Alright, it is indeed depending on hardware configuration.
    I'm running Windows on a 1 TB NVME SSD with 2 partitions (besides MSR/EFI/Recovery), one for the system itself (C:), one for software and games (D:). I have a second SSD, 500 GB via SATA, which I intended to use for user profiles (E:) using your method, Kali. Assigning correct drive letters and editing relocate.xml and the cmd commands accordingly, I could not move the user profiles folder to the SATA SSD. Disconnecting this SSD and instead moving the user profiles folder to the second partition on the NVME SSD works flawlessly, but that's not how I intended to set this up. Any idea what's going wrong?
    Don't know how to edit my last post...
    I solved it after some hours of trying and analysing what's going wrong. Maybe this helps some of you guys with similar errors:

    There is one hardware/software configuration aspect and one human error.
    Concerning the hardware/software, I had to remove the drive letter of D:, which is where my software should be stored. So finally the only drives listed were C: for Windows and E: for user profiles. No other drives were connected or listed, and the one partition on my main drive (for software) was kinda "disabled" and hence not interfering with actions by sysprep/Windows installer/whatever.

    The human error in my actions was adding a backslash ("") to the end of the path in the XML (resulting in "<ProfilesDirectory>E:\Users\</ProfilesDirectory>"). There is a reply in this topic that suggested doing that, so I blindly trusted and followed order in hope to solve my problem (spoiler: it didn't).

    Just my two cents. I'd be glad to hear your feedback!
    Last edited by lehmartin; 30 Dec 2020 at 17:11. Reason: additional information
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  8. tiger10
    Posts : 1
    WIN10
       New #1327

    My first installation windows 10 20H2 accept this change trough the xml file. The second installation give me a error about unattend.xml located at panther folder: "Windows could not parse of process the unattended answers file. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup]"; after this warning, reboot e installation fail !!
    Make 2 pendrives using rufus (UEFI/NTFS), iso file downloaded from media tool, shutdown secure boot and run the installation: this error persist!
    What do i do in this case?

    Hardware parts list:
    SSD P4-120 120G KINGSPEC
    H 1TB SAMSUNG
    8G DDR3 1333MHz
    Graphics card: ZOTAC 8400GS 1GB DDR3
    Last edited by tiger10; 03 Jan 2021 at 13:03.
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  9. schmellic
    Posts : 1
    Windows 10
       New #1328

    tiger10 said:
    My first installation windows 10 20H2 accept this change trough the xml file. The second installation give me a error about unattend.xml located at panther folder: "Windows could not parse of process the unattended answers file. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup]"; after this warning, reboot e installation fail !!
    Make 2 pendrives using rufus (UEFI/NTFS), iso file downloaded from media tool, shutdown secure boot and run the installation: this error persist!
    What do i do in this case?

    Hardware parts list:
    SSD P4-120 120G KINGSPEC
    H 1TB SAMSUNG
    8G DDR3 1333MHz
    Graphics card: ZOTAC 8400GS 1GB DDR3
    I've just spent a while with this very issue!

    When you boot into the "audit mode" check if your drives are listed in the eject removable devices"

    My drives were identified as removable so I fixed via the registry using the information in the post below

    Internal hard drives showing as removable in Windows 10 - Super User

    Once I had made the change, I rebooted and followed the sysprep instructions and it worked 👍🏻
    Last edited by schmellic; 05 Jan 2021 at 02:31. Reason: Amend link
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  10. kevindevm
    Posts : 1
    win 10
       New #1329

    hi i did option 1 last year, and now i will try again to do it option 1 can i do it with the users folder already on D:\??
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