Windows 7: User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

Yeah, I didn't think that script would have affected it, but the timing was odd. The only disk I marked as Active was the SSD. I read things about marking a disk as inactive, but I didn't see any way to do that in Disk Management.

But your screenshot here clearly shows both SSD and SATA partitions (disks) as active.

OK, I have tested a new, different scenario now on three PC's, and it works. Here's what you should do if installing Seven on SSD and relocating User folders using this method, or if for any reason wanting to move ProgramData and / or Users after Windows is already installed. This method can be used whenever you want to relocate Users to another disk on an existing installation of Seven.

If you want to install Seven on an SSD: Install Seven normally to SSD, disconnecting all other disks. After Windows has booted first time normally after installation, shut the computer down and reconnect other disks. Reboot Windows.

Relocating Users and ProgramData folders when Windows Seven is already installed:

Run Command Prompt as administrator by clicking Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories, then right clicking Command Prompt and selecting Run as Administrator:



Type this to command prompt: C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe /audit /reboot, hit Enter.



Windows reboots now to Audit Mode, "thinking" it's been started first time as the message on screen shows:



Now continue from beginning of page 4 in tutorial, and follow the steps described. Running the script causes Windows to move ProgramData and Users folders from C: to another disk or partition, also moving all content of said folders. The later you do this, the longer it takes because Windows has more to move.

Notice that this really makes Windows think it's first boot, so you have to select country and keyboard layout and again create a user account when first time booted in OOBE (normal) mode after running the script. Because the Users folder already contains your user account folders, you get an error message if trying to input the same name:



Use a temporary name, for instance Test to continue first boot routine. When Windows stops for login, choose your old account to login, for instance in my case I chose here Kari and not the account Test which I just created:



When finally in Windows desktop, go to User Accounts and remove the unnecessary Test account. That account has yet no folders to remove because Windows does not create user folders when user account is created; the user folders are only created when user logs in first time.

That's it. Works without any problems whatsoever.

Kari

This new method worked great, thanks.

Before I did this I had renamed my old Users folder Users.old. When I did this, it created a new Users folder which included my old user profile folders and there was no longer a Users.old. Even though my old user folder is under Users, my account isn't listed under User Accounts. If I create a new user account with the same name already in the Users folder, will it just link to that folder with all of my old data?

I think you need to be creative here. After doing this last time, I had an old user folder Kari, and the new one with name Kari.Laptop2 (Windows added the name of the computer to username).

I solved this by logging in as Admin, deleting the new Kari-folders (Kari.Laptop2), renaming Kari (the old user folder) to Kari.old, creating a new user Kari, and then logging in to this now new user account Kari. It then created the default user folders for me. Now I took ownership of Kari.old, and copied its content over to (new) Kari folder.

Then it was just to delete Kari.Old.

Alright, good. That's exactly how I ended up doing it. I thought there might have been a more direct way to do so, but that gets the job done.

I am going to do some serious testing in a next few days. I think moving existing accounts (profiles), you need to first copy the folders of that account to an external drive, then delete the profile, move users using the script told in this tutorial, and then copy the files and folders back.

It seems sysprep is too "clever"; it does not let it to be fooled with renamed user folders but "hijacks" those, causing double user profile name, with the ".ComputerName" extension on the new profile.

Kari

I've run into another problem. I noticed that even though I had renamed the user account name and the user account folder, that the system still viewed it with the original name the account was created as. In my case- Test.

I noticed this after entering netplwiz when following this tutorial- Log On Automatically at Startup

The User Name displayed there was the temporary one I had created. So I went into properties there and updated the User name to the same as the Full name which displayed correctly.

Now I'm not able to access the normal user profiles when logging in under a user account. It creates a temporary account for each log in. Under the admin account I looked at the user folder and it showed SYSTEM as the owner. So I made the user account as the owner, but still no luck.

If I go into User Accounts the new user profile I created is there. If I go into Control Panel> User Accounts> Configure advanced user profile properties, there are only two profiles displayed- Admin and default. So any idea how to create the user profile or to re-associate the user folder with the user account?

I think I got it. I used this for guidance- User Profile - Change Default Location

The profile folders were already where I wanted them, but I figured it wasn't where Windows was looking for them. So looking in regedit I saw that it was still looking for a folder under the temporary account I created- Test. So I changed regedit to reflect the current user and folder names and now when I log into a user account it opens the proper user profile!

The profiles are also now listed correctly under user profile properties as well.

I found that I still have a ProgramData folder on my C drive. It only contains a Windows folder, so I'm guessing it was created before I ran your script after the first login. Is there any harm moving it to the ProgramData folder on my D drive and deleting it from C? Would I have to make some regedit changes to update paths?