Accounts :: Moving User Folder When Win 8 Preinstalled
Sep 8, 2013
I am attempting to relocate the Users folder from C:/ to D:/ (these are physically distinct internal 1 TB drives) as par of a new clean install of Windows 8 on a new laptop.
I am following the tutorial here: User Profiles - Relocate to another Partition or Disk
The problem I face is at the stage of creating an answer file for the Sysprep tool.
Windows 8 is preinstalled and there is no separate installation media - rather it boots/reinstalls off a petition on the C:/ drive. Hnce I cannot run the unattend file command line:
I have tried creating recovery media on a USB stick using the HP utility, but while this works there appears to be no directory structure or file comparable to that listed above. Indeed there seems to be no install.wim file anywhere.
As I am told pre-installs are very common on Win 8 laptops (mine is an HP Envy17-j005tx), I assume there is an alternative approach but I can't find it.....
As to why I want to move the Users folder - I have XP set up like this on my old desktop and it makes for a far saner directory structure, easier backup and if one needs to reinstall Windows, it makes for a much cleaner simpler process as User information is preserved on a separate disk. Also one is much less likely to run out of disk space!!
I recently got my laptop's hard drive replaced by OEM under warranty. I soon realized my user account was at C:UsersAcer. I want to change the name of my user folder to C:UsersNick. I'm wondering what is the best way to go about doing this. I followed the tutorial on renaming user accounts and it worked except that my user folder is still C:UsersAcer. I thought about making a new user account with the proper name and copying whatever I needed over to the new account but I don't think thats going to turn out too well (programs looking for a C:UsersAcer folder that no longer exists)....
I have preinstalled Win 8 on new desktop, now upgraded to 8.1. When I first started setting it up and it required an account login, I didn't really realize that it was going to exist outside my computer. I used my full name and primary email account for it. Then, it set up a folder(s) under Users (using my name), in the file structure. When I copied over say "Documents" from my Win 7 machine, they now show in a path of: This PC / Windows / Users / (myname) / Documents. I will not be using "the cloud" for anything, and want to only have a local account with Admin Privileges and a local account for using 99% of the time. Hence a multi-part question:
1) If I make a change to my MS password, like setting it up with a non-identifying username/password with a Hotmail email (which I never use), how will it affect my docs/pics/music/etc that is under Users / myname? If I change the MS login to a LOCAL login, what effect would it have instead?
2) Is there a way to get (myname) out of the file structure and rename it something neutral, or will that bring chaos?
3) And, as long as I'm asking things...I created the new Admin-Account and Daily-Account, but it seems like neither of them can access anything. They just get "permission denied" - even on the Admin one. I set up a Hotmail account for them both, so they have MS logins as well. Can I just switch them to LOCAL logins as well?
The Windows 8 starts it seems that i loose the permissions to the temp folder. As a result some applications using that folder to launch (for example Google drive) fail giving me an error. Another example are some installation files not starting because the temp folder cannot be used.
So, i have always to go to temp folder and manually set the permissions to have all working.
Customising user folder icons has always been a bit tricky. All user folders apart from the desktop and contacts user folders can be changed via the customize tab in properties when the user folder is accessed from my computer (i.e. not from the desktop).
To customise the desktop and contacts user folders requires a registry change. For Windows 7 this is explained here User Folders - Change Default Icon - Windows 7 Forums, and the necessary .reg files are also provided. This method actually worked for me too in Windows 8. However, after the newest updates, the icons I had added this way have disappeared, and so has the customize tab which I had added via the .reg files available on the page mentioned above. Repeating the reg change would not make a difference. The newest updates must have changed something in the Windows 8 registry to that effect (through those updates all other user folders also lost the custom icon I had previously added, but I was able to easily restore them, as the customize tab of these user folders didn't disappear).
Hence my question: how to now change the folder icons for the desktop and contacts user folders in windows 8?
Since all my other user folders are customised in a particular style, leaving the default icon for the desktop and contacts folders looks a bit weird...
My buddy wants me to relocate his Documents and Pictures folders (by going to Properties/Location tab/Move on those folders) so that they would be in his Google Drive folder, and thereby backed up automatically to the cloud.
I recently deleted a user account, and clicked yes to also delete all associated files...the user was successfully deleted, however, the user's folders/files remain, and cannot be deleted. Is it possible to associate that user's folder with a new user's login? If not, what needs to be done in order to delete the remaining user folder?
Started a new account, with admin privileges. Deleted old account also with admin privileges. Selected the "KEEP FILES" option. Deleted account. A folder pops up in desktop, with the computer's name. Under that folder there was another folder with old user name, and under that folder there was yet another folder also with old user name. Completely empty.
Desktop>[COMPUTERNAME][USERNAME][USERNAME]Empty
I don't have a restore point to which to retrieve my files. The c: disk says there is 600GBs of free space, previously I had only 300. All the library from my old user account have been wiped. I also checked Recycle Bin which is empty. The current account has admin privileges and is set to show hidden files. I was told that it might be under c:Users. I checked that with CMD and two folders were titled "." and "..", they don't show under file explorer.
I am running Recuva right now, but from what I understand that won't be able to restore file names and fragmented files, which are both critical. I also had an encrypted file with a none standard extension which might be ignored by Recuva.
I am trying to move a rar folder to MyGames folder and it's having none of it.. It just seems to be my MyGames folder and no other folders on my PC.
I am currently using Windows 8.1 is there a problem or a glitch with this? I currently have McAfee installed could this be apart of moving folders, copying folders to another folder?
I have checked all my permissions etc in the MyGames folder and they seem to be fine. I am trying to move folder to my Farming Simulator 2013 folder and it's not doing anything not even popping up with any kind of warning why my folder isn't copying, pasting correctly.
I recently got a new laptop and have just installed Windows 8 onto it clean, I then upgraded to 8.1. Everything has been running perfectly but the HDD has two partitions so I wanted to put all my personal documents and files on a separate partition to my programs and Windows.
I achieved this by creating a new Admin account and moving the user's folder to the other partition and then I modified the path to my personal documents via regedit. Everything went according to plan and works fine so far.
However, one side effect of doing this seems to be that the live search found by hovering over the right hand side of the screen is now incredibly slow. Even keystrokes into the search bar suffer from some kind of lag and once a search query has been input it takes around 20-30 seconds to display results.
I have logged into the temporary account I used to move my personal documents and the search is fine on that so I'm guessing it's something to do with having the account on a separate HDD partition to the Windows files and folders.
get my search back to it's original speed whilst still having my personal documents on separate partition to the Windows directory
Is there anyway to stop this from occurring. Everytime I got into documents, music, pictures, or videos folder the titlebar title moves around...mostly to the right. I prefer it to stay centered.
After installing Windows 8 I moved "libraries/My documents" folder to another drive (I have SSD OS drive) but still c: space keeps going low.
I found a folder on my c: drive named by my PC name on the network, e.g. "MyPC" that has 10 GB size and includes the following file tree: MyPC/Documents and settings/Administrator/desktop,Favorites,My documents.
"My documents" seems identical to the Users/Myname/My documents that has been moved to a different drive.
I am the only user and have administrators permissions. It seems this Administrator's folder duplicates my documents somehow. (it's desktop folder is different from MYname Desktop folder). What should I do to clean the space - try to login as administrator and do something about this huge duplicate folder?
Not knowing it would cause problems for me later, I setup a home built computer with a symbolic link for the Users folder from my SSD drive (system drive C) to Drive D. When I found I couldn't update to Windows 8.1 I did some research and discovered I should not have used this method for moving the Users folder and I need to move it back first in order to update.
After doing some research, I decided to follow the knowledge base article found at [URL] .... as my guide to move it back to the system drive. I have started this process and I'm part way through but I have encountered a problem that I can't figure out how to solve.
I booted into safe mode with a command prompt and deleted the symbolic link on my C drive. I followed the instructions in the article to use robocopy to copy the Users folder from my D drive to my system drive but it fails because some system files (like ntuser.dat) can't be copied (presumably because they contain the system info for the account I'm logged into so I am locked out).
I'm not really sure how to get around this and I don't think I'd be able to reboot and get into my system right now unless maybe I recreate the symbolic link from the system drive to d:users.
I am trying to add a second account to my machine and whether I try a Local or Microsoft account, I get the same "User Profile Service failed the sign-in. User profile cannot be loaded" error every time I try to sign in for the first time. I've Googled this a bit and it seems everything I've found yet (except one) has been with logging in to existing profiles. For the one that was with a new profile, the solution didn't work.
I tried deleting all files similar to the specified one (file in C:UsersDefaultAppDataLocalMicrosoftVSCommon12.0SQM with name of "sqmdata-####-###-#####.sqm"), but that had no effect. I'm guessing this is because I have VS2013 installed, as this happens with my laptop as well. I don't want to delete my profile, I have important (and large) data in my documents folder that I don't want to lose. I'm guessing this will have to do with messing with the registry, but I don't know where to begin.
So, I wanted to download a game from the windows store and had to create a Live/microsoft account. After doning so win 8 made that account the account that I use to sigh-in to windows. Didn't wanted that so I went to user managment and deleted the account from thare. The problem is that I also accidenly deleted my windows user account as well.
After I restarted, I got to the password screen and my windows user was gone, just "other user". I tryed to enter the windows user name and password but nothing. the screen also showed the microsoft acount name but here also the password dident work (probably because a deleted them both from the system...)
I have been using an unelevated admin user account since installing win 8.1 pro and I've been having problems constantly (UAC nagging me, access denied when trying to kill processes and so on) and I decided I want to use the elevated admin account as my main. I understand security risks and convenience is more important to me as I don't have any sensitive information on my laptop. I was wondering if I can merge the user account I used until now, which has all my app settings, with the elevated admin user account and use that one from now on.
like everyone else my tiles are missing but for some reason I am under temp user. I'm looking apps there's only a few. I can click on computer, users: to select files from the main user but I cannot sign in as that user. When I click on users it only shows administrator and activate guests. This happened two weeks ago
I have recently installed 8.1 on my desktop with 3 local user accounts (no Microsoft accounts) and no user passwords, and Guest account Off. I have bypassed the lock screen but whenever the computer is switched on or a user signs out, the OS loads the last user instead of going to the user select screen. Something that all Windows OSs have done from go to Win 7. I can back arrow which does display the user select screen.
Or more importantly, any way to make it act like all previous Windows systems. I would not be fussed if this was a single user computer.
I'm on HP laptop 2000-2d27dx Windows 8.1. My login screen shows only one user account. I have to click on arrow to switch to other existing user accounts. Is there a way to display all user accounts at login screen?
I have never had a firm understanding of creating user accounts especially those added to a domain. I have to install windows 8.1 on my work laptop and I need to have someone from my work add a user to our domain. What would happen if I installed windows 8 and all the programs that I use before the user was added to the domain. Will this user have access to all the programs that were installed or would I potentially need to perform a hack or re-install the programs on that account?
I am using windows 8 on an HP desktop computer. I created 2 users (same computer). What I would like to do is have both users have the same desktop files and start menu between the two. For example the first one I created has a bunch of folders I put on the desktop recovered from my old computer, but when I log on with the other account they are not there. I also installed ms office on my computer with the first user- but it is not available to the other one.
Is there a way to link these 2 so I can still have different logins but access the same files?
How to correct user accounts in windows 8 Pro on new HP Pavilion g7 2246nr, I set notebook up using Microsoft account then called Microsoft when problems started, and we decided to switched to a local account. They created a new user account, then copied all my files to it. But I ended up with i administrator account that could not be deleted. That worked but my files are broken up between 3 other user accounts. I spoke with Microsoft to try and consolidate the accounts and they used a command line in cmd, run as an administrator, but it did not finish, or I may have cut it off by accident.
I am still working with the system but it has problems. I have reloaded the software 3 times so for. How to correct the problem without reloading all the software again? Also after setting up sharepoint in Office Pro Plus, it created another administrator account in UAC. I did not think this was going to happen? Right now in the UAC I have two administrator accounts with the sane name, In c:users there 5 with the temp file they created. What that command line they attempted to use was to correct and consolidate the user accounts.
How to correct the problem without reloading all the software again.
I have a user with a machine that was setup with Win 8.1 Home. The machine has been upgraded to 8.1 Pro and joined to a domain (WinSrv 2003). I need to get the content/configuration from their old local machine user profile to their new domain user profile.
I tried to copy the contents of their ../users/<name>/.. folder from the local user profile to the new domain user profile (after they had logged in once, and then logged off). This did not work. When I did the copy, I grabbed all files, including hidden...was that my mistake, or is the issue broader?
In the end....they want their old stuff and configuration under their new credentials/profile.
I have come across a problem with Windows 8.1 and local user accounts all of a sudden.
When I logon using a local username and password I keep being told that my password is incorrect.
The password IS correct. The account does exist.The account is NOT disabled.
I can login with a Microsoft Online Account fine. But I don't want to (and shouldn't have to) use this option. I have also tried converting the Online account to a Local account but once I do this and log off I am told again that my password is incorrect, which it isn't.
I am running a Win 7 OS on an SSD and I have some programs installed on a different hard drive. And I want to move this program files folder on the same hard drive but different partition. Is it possible to do this without breaking the program links?
I just recovered my windows system partition from an Acronis backup. Everything works fine except for anything that needs to write to Appdata. Cannot download, cannot run Dropbox, or create new user profile at logon. I have tried "Take Ownership", have set my user as owner via security settings, have given my user full control, but nothing works.
How can I stop the libraries and user folder from expanding when I open Explorer? I used your example and removed the libraries folder, but I did not see one for the user folder.
