Is there any way to protect the disk where the user folder is located from being formatted?
I tested and despite of the warning that Windows shows that the disk is being used, it still allows to be formatted, leading to catastrophic failure of the whole system.
I have a HP Omen with dual drives and the methods 1 and 2 are not working. On the last 5 laptops I have done this on i had no problems. This HP has win 10 1903 pre-loaded, but the LG Gram I did before also has win 10 1903 pre-loaded and it worked. any help?
I followed the instructions of Method One during a fresh install of Windows 10 (1909 Build 18363.418) and it appears to have worked as far as moving the Users folder goes.
But now when I'm installing things I often get an error that has similar information as what is found in the relocate.xml file. I've never seen these kind of error messages before until I did this. And now I'm seeing it quite often. These things must be related.
Here's an example error:
Any tips on how to get my system working again so I can properly install software without running into these kinds of errors?
Your error is related to Microsoft .NET framework, and has nothing to do with relocated Users folder.
an error occurred during the installation of assembly microsoft.vc90 - Bing
Kari
Thank you, Kari. I was pretty sure my issue was caused by this because I've done fresh installs of Windows 10 on this machine many times and never encountered the issue until I moved my User directory following these instructions. But perhaps it was just a fluke that the issue occurred when it did.
However, following your link I was able to find this search result and following Method 2 I fixed issues with the Microsoft .NET Framework on my PC and now things appear to be installing properly.
So thank you once again, for pointing me in the right direction to resolve the issue, even if it was not related to this topic.
Hi Kari,
I hope you can assist with this issue. I tried to research and go through past posts but my issue seems unique.
I did your solution for my first fresh windows 7 install 8 years ago and it worked swimmingly.
I would like to do the same thing again - relocate the User Profile to D drive, however i keep running into the same issue as seen in the screenshot below:
windows could not parse or process unattend answer file [D:\relocate.xml]. The specified file does not exist.
You can clearly see in the screenshot it does exist.
I have tried a number of time to reinstall Windows 10 to get it to work but it doesn't seem to want to take.
Some info about my PC build
- Using old hardrives, completely reformatted
- CPU: AMD 3700X
- Mobo: Asus X570-P
- Using my windows 7 product key to activate windows 10 (the boot USB i am installing from is the full version of windows 10, not the 'upgrade from Win7 version'.
Any assistance or direction you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
- - - Updated - - -
Ok, so...i got it to work using Method 2.
It seem when going into Audit Mode during the initial setup Windows 10 created a temporary user profile called 'Administrator'. You can see the difference in the command line paths in my screenshot compared to your guide where mine is /User/Administrator and yours is written as windows/system32.
It seems like when finalising the installation of Windows 10 (creating a profile etc.), the profile that initially gets created i a true blue Admin account and when opening cmd, C:\windows\system32 is written AND text documents correctly save as XML file.
Meaning that using Method 2 has resulted in being able to switch my User Profile to D drive successfully!
Last edited by Struckd; 12 Jan 2020 at 14:42.
Hello!
Thanks Kari for this post, it is very useful.
Now I have a question.
I did everything as described in method 2 and my existing Windows installation has finally moved the Users folders from the C: drive to the D: drive.
No Users folder on drive C: more. I was very happy.
The day after the transfer (which takes a long time), I discovered that another new Users folder is back on the C: drive. There is the old Users folder on drive D: (I double-checked it) [B] and [/ B] there is still a Users folder on drive C :.
Inside that "new" Users folder there is only one profile folder, mine, or the profile folder of the user belonging to the user who has logged in to the PC, with only a few subfolders: two dropbox folders (personal and office), the downloads folder, two one drive folders (personal and office) and the icloud drive folder. The folder of the other existing profile, Publish, is located only in drive D:.
The subfolders that I find in my profile folder on drive C: are also located in my profile folder on drive D:. So there is a kind of duplication. The content is not always the same: for example, the "new" download folder (the one in drive C :) contains only more recent files (ie files that I downloaded after the transfer). In contrast, Dropbox personal folders have the same content (only two files are different, .dropbox and desktop.ini.
And my question obviously is: why ??
Thanks for your time, best regards.
Riccardo.
- - - Updated - - -
Sorry if I made someone waste time to read my question.
The problem really has a simple solution.
Dropbox, iCloud and Edge have their own settings that override those of the profile. All these programs have a location that can be chosen by the user for saving files. If the position does not exist, it is created. That's why the Users folder in C: was created again after the move, and inside it, there was only my profile (and not also the Public one). The folder in which those programs manage the files had not been changed in their respective settings. When they didn't find it because of the move, those programs recreated it.
My respects ... and best wishes, given the period.
Hello,
Used this tutorial when setting up Windows 10 a few years back and moved User Folder to another partition
Now, am having issues with Windows update and might need to either use (per post https://www.tenforums.com/windows-updates-activation/154333-feature-update-windows-10-version-1909-error-0x80240438.html)
- Media creation tool to update to latest Win-1909 OR
- install using windows10.0-kb4549951-x64_5411f88ea08bfc0ac98f388f5a3bdc8bcfea3261.msu
Wondering what things to consider before deciding on which step to choose and what to look for while updating considering my Users folder etc are on another partition. Do I need to restore user folders back to C:\ and then do these updates?
Thanks for your assistance.
I messed up, i believe i removed a few time ago my WINDOWS~BT folder on my existing windows(which i was trying to move users folder) so after i ran sysprep from method one step two, the system tried to enter on installation menu from OOBE , but it fails and asks to restart... every time...
Is there any fix for this problem?
I can access prompt command line from my windows installation usb pen drive, is there anything i can do to cancel the OOBE boot?
Kari - on 7forums i was papa john and you and whs helped me some years back when you were smoking! Anyway, with w7 demise i decided to upgrade to 10pro - I have a laptop and desktop i'm working on - the laptop i used your method of putting the install on a partition and that worked great (moved the users to D: ok) so far so good. The desktop i thought was ok - did clean install from usb but i had trouble with the usb booting over and over and searched and found a solution which worked - also the clean install changed the computer name and it wouldn't activate until i figured it out and renamed it back to what MS had on my acct (devices) and then it digitally activated ok. Also, during the install, i went into audit mode to move the users to D: and everything was ok - this was using my MS acct user and password - this was the true acct user not the normal contracted email user name. Call it User1 - So on Explorer on C: it shows the user system folders and if you do properties, it says D:\user1\etc - This seemed ok but then i decided to switch to a local acct which i did - everything went normal and the local acct is User2 which when you reboot it's user2 and in control panel-user accounts it shows User2 only- except on D:users it's still User1 - Have you any idea how to fix this without a reinstall???? Any help appreciated - John
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