Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10

Fordlobus · 04 May 2018

Hi Kari,
I managed to find out. Just when Cortana wants to start setting up the PC, I pressed CTRL+SHIFT+F3 and was able to enter Audit Mode after a reboot, with the buil-in Administrator account and make all the necessary changes described in the Method1 process.

Anyways I had to roll back to W10 1703, because for some reason, Edge was not working, could not access System Settings, nor disable Windows Defender. Tried 3 times to make a clean install, always with same result. Either my W10 image downloaded is corrupt, or this method1 is not valid for 1803 version.

I'll give it another couple of tries over the weekend to get to the root cause.

Tell you the outcome next week!

johngalt · 04 May 2018

Fordlobus said:

Hi Kari,
I managed to find out. Just when Cortana wants to start setting up the PC, I pressed CTRL+SHIFT+F3 and was able to enter Audit Mode after a reboot, with the buil-in Administrator account and make all the necessary changes described in the Method1 process.

Anyways I had to roll back to W10 1703, because for some reason, Edge was not working, could not access System Settings, nor disable Windows Defender. Tried 3 times to make a clean install, always with same result. Either my W10 image downloaded is corrupt, or this method1 is not valid for 1803 version.

I'll give it another couple of tries over the weekend to get to the root cause.

Tell you the outcome next week!

I noticed you mentioned a way to avoid cleaning out the drive - I'm assuming that this is actually what you tried?

@Kari has mentioned that if you don't completely format the destination drive you attempt this at your own risk. The destination drive needs to be as pristine as possible in order to prevent any leftover bits confusing the system when moving the \Users tree.

Kari · 04 May 2018

johngalt said:

@Kari has mentioned that if you don't completely format the destination drive you attempt this at your own risk. The destination drive needs to be as pristine as possible in order to prevent any leftover bits confusing the system when moving the \Users tree.

Exactly.

In most cases everything works just fine even if the target drive is not empty, as long as the existing content is not Windows system files and folders from another installation. I have been relocating Users folder with Sysprep incredibly many times since Vista and Seven, currently doing at least a few test installs every month on both physical and virtual machines. Only issues I've had have been when target drive contains some system files or folders from other installations.

Especially relocating to a drive which contains Users folder from another installation is a big "NO NO". A question occasionally asked is "I have a dual boot system, W10 Home and PRO editions. Can I use the same Users folder on another drive for both operating systems?". Answer to that question is simple: "Yes, you can, if you don't mind both operating systems becoming totally unusable!"

The same goes with having both operating systems to use different profile folder on same drive. It simply does not work.

I have no authority to tell you geeks what you should and shouldn't do, anyone can of course test whatever scenarious you can think of. However, my strong recommendation is that you use Sysprep to relocate Users folder only to an empty drive.

Kari

Kari · 04 May 2018

zxtour said:

The tutorial refers to the answer file with the following parameters:

https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance

http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State

> The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Those are not website or webpage addresses. They are addresses used to check validity of an answer file. As you found out, they can't be opened in browser. They are required in answer file.

zxtour said:

Also what does publicKeyToken and versionScope refers to?

The token and scope are used to check the validity of an answer file, using those addresses you mentioned. They are required parameters.

zxtour said:

Also if there are any concerns, as referenced in some of the earlier postings,
in using separation of user profiles location from the system directory during system updates etc.
I have Windows 10 Pro Version 1709.

Windows Update and Upgrade both work perfectly also when Users folder has been relocated.

Fordlobus said:

1) Is this method valid for last week's windows update (spring 2018) ?

Yes. Already done this half a zoden times on 1803 and latest Windows Insider builds.

Fordlobus said:

2) Is there any way to avoid cleaning up completely the destination drive for X.\Users ?

See my previous post, just above this one.

Fordlobus said:

Anyways I had to roll back to W10 1703, because for some reason, Edge was not working, could not access System Settings, nor disable Windows Defender. Tried 3 times to make a clean install, always with same result. Either my W10 image downloaded is corrupt, or this method1 is not valid for 1803 version.

Did the last test install just minutes ago, absolutely no problems. Can't explain why you had such issues.

Kari

bumgarb42 · 06 May 2018

I am about to attempt an upgrade from Win 10 1703 to 1803. I'm wondering, has anyone else has run into issues going from 1703 to 1803, other than the recently posted by "Fordlobus"?

Background:
For this specific computer, I attempted to upgrade from 1703 to 1709 back in November. While the upgrade itself worked, it caused the system to spontaneously reboot 1-2 times a day. I did a clean install of 1709, same issue. All available drivers were up-to-date. I ended up clean installing back to 1703 and have remained at 1703 since. I've made disk images of C: and D: before attempting this upgrade to 1803, just in case the reboot issue starts again. As an aside, this computer is a DIY, built December 2014 (~ 3 years old). The motherboard manufacturer hasn't released updates since 2015-2016, so the problem could exist there.

johngalt · 10 May 2018

bumgarb42 said:

I am about to attempt an upgrade from Win 10 1703 to 1803. I'm wondering, has anyone else has run into issues going from 1703 to 1803, other than the recently posted by "Fordlobus"?

Background:
For this specific computer, I attempted to upgrade from 1703 to 1709 back in November. While the upgrade itself worked, it caused the system to spontaneously reboot 1-2 times a day. I did a clean install of 1709, same issue. All available drivers were up-to-date. I ended up clean installing back to 1703 and have remained at 1703 since. I've made disk images of C: and D: before attempting this upgrade to 1803, just in case the reboot issue starts again. As an aside, this computer is a DIY, built December 2014 (~ 3 years old). The motherboard manufacturer hasn't released updates since 2015-2016, so the problem could exist there.

It's interesting that you're having this issue, on a newer system than the other person that I know that had this issue (his was an Intel X58 chipset-based Intel motherboard with a Core i7 920 (Bloomfield) CPU) - it refused to install anything after 1709 (The Insider Preview builds).

Your machine sounds like it is newer than his (or mine, which is also X58-based, eVGA motherboard with a Core i7 965 EE (Bloomfield) CPU and 12 GB of triple channel RAM), but I had had 0 issues installing any Windows 10 builds going back as far as the days of Technical Preview 2....

You can always try it after making a system image that you can restore later.

Get Macrium Free, install it, and make an image of your machine as it is now before you attempt to upgrade.

Then, attempt the upgrade - if it doesn't work, restore your Macrium image and you'll save a lot of time from not having to cleanly install Build 1703 again.

bumgarb42 · 14 May 2018

Thanks for the response John.

My upgrade from 1703 to 1803 was successful. It has been up for 6 days and hasn't had a single spontaneous reboot.

I did make images beforehand, though I used dd from Linux for that task.

zxcvbs · 16 May 2018

Hi, I tried to follow Method 2, but after sysprep it hanged on a bootloop. what is the difference with doing just this?

Code:

WARNING: Create a backup and a restore point before you try this. I messed up once and had to do a restore myself!

Requires local admin.

Move files that you want to keep from your profile somewhere independent, for example directly on the C: or D: drive

Modify the registry value of ProfilesDirectory under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList to point to your new directory. This will only come into effect for new profiles

Create a temporary user with admin rights on the local computer. This is needed to remove your domain user profile so it can be recreated.

Log out of your account and log into the temporary admin user.

Find Advanced System Settings (for example through Start | Run and typing sysdm.cpl) and select Settings from the User Profile section.

Find your username and click the Delete button

I recommend using Switch Accounts rather than logging out of the temporary account. That way, if something went wrong, you still have one account that's working

Switch accounts to your real account. The profile should now be created in the correct location.

This worked, like a charm.

How do I change the User Profile location in Windows 10? - Super User

HC1Gunner · 20 May 2018

Kari,

(original post page 116 27 Feb 2018 #1154)

I finally got around to buying the new drive, and trying to install it, but the above procedure did not work as simple as it was. This makes no sense to me. On my first attempt I don't think diskpart renamed my new "D" drive to the intended G: drive, as diskpart was showing my optical drive as G: even though it was not G: in Windows.
So the first login attempt gave this error:

"The ProfSvc service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded".

I then disconnected every drive in my system except C: and D: the new drive. I opted to disconnect the old G: drive from the get-go. I even tried clone the old G: drive and 2nd time. Even with successfully renaming D: to G:, I still got the same above error when I tried to login to windows. Your thoughts please, and other ideas? I went into this thinking, this procedure is so simple, and it will work, I still can't understand what the problem is. With the drive cloned, and the exact same files on it, the only thing windows would see is its a larger drive.

I use Acronis 2017, and used its tools to clone my G: drive. I have an image of Windows with latest drivers, and windows updated at the time of creating the image. The image was created of C:, and included the G: drive as Acronis saw that my "User" folder/profile was on it. What would happen if I removed the old smaller G: drive, and replaced it with the new drive, and used Acronis to to a restore form the image, booting into Acronis from outside of Windows, do you think this would work?

Kari · 20 May 2018

HC1Gunner said:

So the first login attempt gave this error:

"The ProfSvc service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded".

Are you doing Method One (clean install), or Method Two (relocating Users folder on an existing installation)?