User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

Kari, hope you are well. I have written before and have successfully used your method to split the program and user information on Win 7 installations. I am by no means a guru so have to follow the instructions given quite literally.

On my father's machine, the D drive where the user information is stored looks to be failing and will need to be replaced. His C drive is an SSD with a Win 7 64 home version installed. He has a third, larger HDD on the machine used only for internal backups and was considering using your #22 method earlier in this forum (sounds like Chinese takeaway) for copying the data to a new partition on this third HDD. I have had him back up the drive externally and is backed up to third HDD as well.

So the steps are I set up a new partition on the third HDD, run #22 process and then follow the original instructions as directed in the #22 instructions? I assume there is no special modification of the .xml file, as Windows knows that the User profile is already installed on D: not on C:? So no disconnection of hard drives, etc is required? When successfully migrated, my dad can simply replace the failing disk and use that as a new back up. Thanks.

Regards
Chris

Thanks. Will see if I can walk my father through the instructions.

Kari said:

Yes, everything should work like you have planned it, instructions in post #22 are still valid. I've had to replace the drive used to store the Users folder (and ProgramData folder), the process being something like this:

• Move (backup) all personal content (documents, images, videos, music and such) from all user profiles to an external location to be sure nothing will be lost
• Follow the instructions in post #22 to move the Users folder (and ProgramData folder if that is also relocated) to a new location
• When done, copy the backed up personal content from the external location back to corresponding user profile folders

Question...

I did this back years ago when I first installed Windows 7, and now I need to move my Users and ProgramData folders back onto C drive in anticipation of Windows 10. 8 and beyond does not play well with relocated ProgramData and Users and Microsoft stopped supporting this set up.

Seems it makes the most sense to use unattend.xml to move the folders again, but did you have any issues with the registry for installed Programs?

I did a quick search in the registry and there are a crapload of references to D:\Users and D:\ProgramData outside of the usual profile image keys, would sysprep take care of those as well?

I have an SSD and I wanted to use a different drive for the user porfile and data.
I did move the profile to disk D: during installation of win7 succesfully some year ago.

Now I dicided to change this disk D:.
So I cloned the disk to a different one and exchanged the disks.
Now the whole system meesed up. The new disk was given the driveletter F:
So no user profiles could be found.
I found out how to change the driveletter and changed it back to D:
Still the system was messed up. I could not get the correct user profile any more.
Also programs can not be found (because startmenu does not show them)
I check the registry, but the profilelist was set to the correct path (D:/users/....).

Anyone with some hints or solution??

Thanks for the response Kari,

I just didn't think about doing the sysprep.
Nothing else to do then to reinstall now, I was afraid for that already.
It is a good lesson for the next time though.

Best regards.

Hi Kari!

I joined the forum in order to at last post a big Thank You for this excellent instruction that helped me so many times when I upgraded PCs of friends an family to Win 7!

Also I want to share a hickup I experienced some days ago when I wanted to install Win7 Professional 64bit on a refurbished Fujitsu Esprimo 700: Since it came without OS, I installed a SSD and got myself an original Fujitsu Win7 Professional 64bit OEM installation DVD. With that I did what I did so many times before - this time to my surprise in vain. After sysprepping, the user folders were still on drive C:... I tried again, I tried to sysprep the installed system - nothing. My wife was already raising an eyebrow: "I'm just installing Win7 honey, can't be more than 30 minutes". Famous last words Frustrated I grabbed my good old DELL OEM installation DVD (also Win7 Professional 64bit) and hey - user profiles on drive D: just where I wanted them to be.

Did you ever run into a similar problem? Any idea why this happened? BTW the Fujitsu DVD does not work with the sysprep routine on any other PC either...

So for now the Fujitsu Esprimo has to cope with the fact that it shows manufacturer DELL when you call up the computere properties ;-)

Best Regards
Andreas