User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

ferrari353 · 26 Dec 2012

Kari said:

I honestly think your best shot is to reinstall. Copying Usrs and Programdata manually and removing the drive where they were originally located has screwed your setup and registry.

Creating links now could cause bigger irreparable problems.

My recommendation is to reinstall. You have messed up, to make things OK again it's the best you could do. It also helps you to avoid related future issues.

If you are not willing to do that, you could try this method to move your user folders (do not move ProgramData and AppData folders with it). However, your screwed settings and registry can cause problems whatever you'll do.

Kari

Okay well I also bought a windows 8 upgrade a few months back but it was only giving me the option of a clean install, presumably because I had my stuff split up. Is there any way to do this on Windows 8?

Kari · 26 Dec 2012

ferrari353 said:

Okay well I also bought a windows 8 upgrade a few months back but it was only giving me the option of a clean install, presumably because I had my stuff split up. Is there any way to do this on Windows 8?

From our sister site Windows 8 Forums: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...tion-disk.html

ferrari353 · 26 Dec 2012

Kari said:

ferrari353 said:

Okay well I also bought a windows 8 upgrade a few months back but it was only giving me the option of a clean install, presumably because I had my stuff split up. Is there any way to do this on Windows 8?

From our sister site Windows 8 Forums: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...tion-disk.html

Well its an upgrade, so I would have to install windows 7 first and then it wouldn't be like starting from a clean install of windows 8, so would I use the method that does it to an existing installation?

Gronnie · 22 Jan 2013

Great tutorial, this helped me SO SO SO much!

Kari · 22 Jan 2013

Hi Gronnie, welcome to the Seven Forums. Always nice to get positive feedback :).

Gronnie · 22 Jan 2013

So right now I have a 64GB SSD as the System Drive, and a 2TB HDD that I use as a Data Disc and created everything from your tutorial on during install. I now want to upgrade to a bigger SSD. I figured I could just do a System Image of the C: drive using windows backup, but it won't let me just do the C: drive because it says that D: is a system drive as well. I have tons of data on the D: drive so I can't do an image including D: and then install it on the new SSD, it will be too big. What is going to be the best way to move just the C: drive to the new SSD?

derekimo · 22 Jan 2013

Yeah, it see's D drive as a system drive because you moved your profile there. There may be other ways to do what you want but moving your profile back to C should allow you to just image C.

Macrium might be able to just image your C drive, I'd wait and see what some of the others have to say as there might be a simple method I'm not aware of.

Kari · 22 Jan 2013

Gronnie, as Derek told you above your D: drive is now a system drive because you have moved Users (a system folder) to it. Your best should would most probably be to use a third party imaging application.

If you want to use Windows native imaging, you need first to "reverse" relocation i.e. move Users (and ProgramData if you have relocated it, too) back to C:. This can easily be done by running sysprep again using the answer file (script) from the tutorial, this time changing the folder location back to C: (see this post).

Kari

Britton30 · 22 Jan 2013

Hi Gronnie. I did use the bootable Macrium Reflect WinPE disk to do what you want to do. I found I had to image BOTH the OS and Data drives, then restore both images with WinPE for it to work. For some reason doing only the OS drive didn't work, it said to insert the OS drive.

WinPE is a bootable version of Macrium.
Free Macrium: Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

WinPE, thoughtfully provided by WHS, otherwise you'll need to download WAIK, about 3GB: https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=475a0...A6D4035%211812

And his Macrium tutorial: Imaging with free Macrium

You may find Kari's solution easier.

Kari · 22 Jan 2013

Britton30 said:

Hi Gronnie. I did use the bootable Macrium Reflect WinPE disk to do what you want to do. I found I had to image BOTH the OS and Data drives, then restore both images with WinPE for it to work. For some reason doing only the OS drive didn't work, it said to insert the OS drive.

Thanks for confirming this. It means that when system folders are located on several drives, all of them need to be included on image. When you think of it it's logical. It's called a system image.

So it looks like the reversed sysprepping, moving Users and ProgramData back before imaging is the only way if you only want to image C:. The question is, would the image be any smaller, for it still contains those two folders.

Kari