User Profile - Change Default Location

How to Change the Default Location of a User Profile in Vista and Windows 7​

   Information

A user profile is the main C:\Users\(user-name) folder of a user account that contains all of the account's settings, shortcuts, information, and user folders (ex: My Music) with the files in them.

This will show you how to Move the default location of a user profile in Windows 7 and Vista to another location of your choice so it will be stored and used from the new location instead.

This can be handy if you are low on free space on your C: drive.

You must be logged in as an administrator to be able to do the steps in this tutorial.

   Warning

Before doing this, you should create a system image to be safe. This way you can do a system image recovery to undo any mistake you might make in the instructions below that could result in the user profile you are moving, or Windows, to no longer work.

   Note

The drive or partition that you move the user profile folder(s) to, will now be included in a system image if created since it will now be considered a system drive.

   Tip

If you are just wanting to save HDD space from the files in your user folders, then you might consider this below to be able to access the files from your libraries with the files actually located where you like instead. This way you will not have to worry about any potential issues that come with moving user folder locations.

• Create a new folder at any location you want.
• Move any files you want into the new folder.
• Include the new folder into a library of your choice.
• If you like, you can also set the new folder to be the default "save" to location for the library as well.

OPTION ONE

For Already Existing User Accounts

   Warning

Some of the programs you have installed may not work properly after moving your user profile folder since they are still looking for their information in the user profile folder's original AppData folder location which of course no longer exists.

If you have this problem afterwards, then you may be able to uninstall and reinstall these programs, or use OPTION TWO in the tutorial to create a new user account and create new shortcuts for the programs to fix this.

Method One

To Change the Default Location of an Existing User Profile

1. Log on to the user account that you want to move. In Windows Explorer, navigate to it's C:\Users\(user-name) folder, right click on the user folder, click on Share with and Nobody.

2. Log off.

3. Log on to an administrator account that you are not moving it's user folder for.
NOTE: If you do not have another administrator account to use, then you will need to create a new account first and log in to it. When done with the tutorial, you can delete the new account.

4. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the C:\Users\(user-name) folder (ex: C:\Users\User account to move) that you want to move. Right click on it and click on Copy. (see screenshot below)

5. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the new location (ex: E: drive) that you want to move the C:\Users\(user-name) folder to. Right click on a empty space in the main window (middle), and click on Paste. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: This should be another internal hard drive or partition.

6. If prompted, click on Continue. (see screenshot below)

7. If prompted by UAC, then click on Yes (Windows 7) or Continue (Vista).

8. The C:\Users\(user-name) folder (step 4) is now copied over to the new location (ex: E:\User account to move). You can close Windows Explorer. (see screenshot below)

9. Open the Start Menu, then type regedit in the search box and press enter.

10. If prompted by UAC, then click on Yes (Windows 7) or Continue (Vista).

11. In regedit, navigate to the location below. (see screenshot below)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

12. In the left pane under the Profilelist key, select and look at each S-1-5 key with the long number until you see the user account name and path (step 3) that you want to move in the value Data column of ProfileImagePath in the right pane. When the correct user name is found, right click on ProfileImagePath, and click on Modify. (see screenshot above)

13. Type in the full path of the location (ex: E:\User account to move) that you copied the user profile folder to in step 7, and click on OK. (see screenshot below)

14. Regedit will now look similiar to this with the new location now. Close regedit. (see screenshot below)

15. To Verify that the User Profile has been Moved Successfully
A) Log off or Switch User, then log in to the user account that you moved the user profile folder of.

B) Open the Start Menu and open the user profile folder from this location. (see screenshot below)

C) Right click on one of the user folders (ex: Desktop), click on Properties, and click on the Location tab. (see screenshot below)

D) You should see the new location (ex: E:\User account to move\Desktop) from step 8 as the now new default location. Click on OK. (see screenshot above)
16. To Delete the User Profile from the Old Location
NOTE: Once you have verified (step 15) that the moved user profile has been moved successfully, you can now safely delete the user profile folder from the old location (ex: C:\Users\User account to move) from step 4.
A) Log off of the user account that you moved if you are logged into it from step 15.

B) Log on to an administrator account that you did not move it's user folder for.

C) In Windows Explorer, navigate to the old C:\Users\(user-name) folder (ex: C:\Users\User account to move) that you had copied (step 4). Right click on it and click on Delete. (see screenshot below)

D) If prompted by UAC, then click on Yes (Windows 7) or Continue (Vista).

E) If prompted, click on Continue. (see screenshot below)

F) You can now empty the Recycle Bin to finish deleting the old user profile folder from the old location.
NOTE: You will need to approve emptying the Recycle Bin.
17. The existing user profile folder has now been completely moved to the new default location where Windows 7 or Vista will now run it from when logged on to it.

Method Two

To Restore the Existing User Profile's Default Location

1. Repeat OPTION ONE, but move the new default User Profile folder (ex: E:\User account to move) and registry entries back to the original C:\Users folder location (ex: C:\Users\User account to move).

OPTION TWO

For All New User Accounts Created

   Note

This will change where all newly created user accounts will have their user profile folder created at in a default location of your choice instead of the old default C:\Users location.

Thank you to Alain for pointing this out.

1. To Change the Default User Profile Location of New User Accounts
A) Open the Start Menu, then type regedit in the search box and press enter.
B) If prompted by UAC, then click on Yes (Windows 7) or Continue (Vista).

C) In regedit, navigate to the location below. (see screenshot below)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

D) In the right pane of ProfileList, right click on ProfilesDirectory and click on Modify. (see screenshot above)

E) Type in the full path (ex: E:\Users) of where you want new user accounts to be created at, and click on OK. (see screenshot below)

F) The registry will now look similar to this. (see screenshot below)

G) When you create a new user account, it's user profile folder will now be created at the location you specified in step 1E.
2. To Restore the Default User Profile Location of New User Accounts
A) Repeat step 1, but type %SystemDrive%\Users at step 1E instead.
NOTE: This step only changes the user profile folder location of any newly created user accounts back to this default location, and not any existing user accounts.

B) If you wish to change an already existing new account's user profile folder location, then you will need to do Method Two in OPTION ONE above to change it back to C:\Users.
3. Close regedit.

That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Customize Default User Profile in Audit Mode
• How to Change the Default Location of Windows 7 User Folders
• How to Restore the Default Location of Windows 7 User Folders
• How to Change the Windows 7 Default User Folder Icons
• How to Pin Your User Files Folder to the Windows 7 Taskbar
• How to Create Your Own Special User Folder
• How to Restore Windows 7 Default User Folder Icons
• How to Add or Remove your User Folder from the Windows 7 Navigation Pane
• How to Allow or Prevent Users to Move their User Folders to a New Location
• How to Add or Remove "User Folder" from Desktop Context Menu
• How to Create User Accounts on another Partition or Disk During Windows 7 Installation
• How to Free Up and Recover Hard Drive Space in Windows 7
• How to Change the User Folder Name of a User Profile in Windows 7

 

[Brink]

Nar, I wouldn't do that with the registry. I'll most likely break something.

In addition, manage your backup to make changes in step 4 below, use "Let me choose" at step 8 below, and uncheck theses folders on the C: drive in step 9. This will remove them from being included in the backup, and to stop getting the can't find them message.

 

[TONPumper]

When I did a clean reinstall of Windows 10, I named my new account the same name as the account I had on Windows 7. My Windows 7 user folder with all of my documents, music, and settings was on my D: partition and my Windows 10 user account folder was on my C: partition. I used this method on my Windows 10 machine to edit the registry and merged the C: user with the old D: user. It seems to have worked fine. There are a few hiccups with Windows trying to read programs that aren't there but other than that, everything seems okay.

 

[M3rLiN]

Hi Brink.

Thanks for a great tutorial... I've done the "Method 2" option on a new computer. It wil be added t a domain with a server where I'll add the domain user when I get the computer to that location, i.e. the domain user will (should) be added to the new disk location.

I read that someone had had problems with this setup, but I'm not sure if he MOVED the user or if he did a method 2. Have you heard of any other problems with this regarding domain users on server networks.

Thing is, I've added left over, smaller SSD's as system disks on new desktop computers and set their standard mecanical drives as secondaries, so this really need to work...

 

[Brink]

Hello M3rLiN, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If you meant "OPTION TWO" for new accounts instead, then that is the one that works best. OPTION ONE for an existing account can sometimes have issues with it breaking installed programs.

I don't have an experience using this with a domain, but it should work the same.

 

[tjg79]

I attempted this tutorial on a clean install to move my user account to the d:\ using option 1, method 1, but it didn't appear to be fully successful. When I logged back in to the moved account, all my personal settings were gone or lost. Also, when I checked the user accounts location via the Start Button location, it appeared to be on: C:\Users\TEMP. I suspect there as a new TEMP directory created that everything was move to.

The only thing I noticed when I was performing the tutorial, was that when I was copying the user account to be moved to the new location, I got many indications that files couldn't be moved, because they were in use.

I suspect the problem may be that when I was switching between user accounts, I didn't do a complete restart. So, the files were still in use by the user account that wasn't active.

Is there a fix for this condition?

Regards



The system appears to have created a new user account, TEMP



Whatever I did, it wasn't what was intended. It appears the Administrator account was changed to TEMP.

I could probably figure this out and fix it, but I might do something worse that is unfixable. I'll be waiting for assistance.

Regards

 

[Brink]

Hello tjg,

Usually reversing the process to restore the default location will sort this for you.

 

[tjg79]

Hello tjg,

Usually reversing the process to restore the default location will sort this for you.

I would normally think so, but it looks like a new entry was created in the registry and the entry I intended to change was made into a back-up.

The worst part is I don't understand what went wrong.

How would you fix this?

Regards

 

[Brink]

I'd still try the system restore if you haven't already.

 

[tjg79]

I don't have a restore point. If I reverse my actions and then manually edit the registry to remove that backup entry, would that work? How do I get the old Administrator account to show up as Administrator and not Temp?

 

[tjg79]

OK, I'm back to square one. Everything is restored.

I'm not sure what went wrong, but the first thing I noticed while following those instructions was that a number of files that appeared to be hidden system files wouldn't copy, because they were in use. I have my user account set to log in automatically. So, even if I create a second account for the purpose of this tutorial, I will always log into my regular account if I start or reboot. I was switching between the different accounts by going to the Start Button/Shut down arrow and selecting Switch user. I suspect that some of my regular account system files are still in use and can't be copied for that reason. Perhaps if I change my user account to require a password login so that when I start or reboot, I arrive a screen that requires a choice of which account is logging in, then the other account's files wouldn't be in use and they could be copied without issue. So, it's my impression now that I need to restart when switching accounts for the purposes of this tutorial.

I will change my user account to require a password login and then try this tutorial again.

Regards

 

[tjg79]

I changed my logon from automatic to password and did a hard user switch. I was able to copy the user folder to the D: drive, but I wasn't able to completely delete the user folder from the system drive, C:. There are still a lot of hidden files in that folder that apparently didn't copy. App Data is one of those files. Is there a solution to copy all the files so the old user folder can be deleted?

Also, Windows Explorer shows that there is another folder under the C:\Users. It's the Public folder. How can that folder be moved to the D: drive?

 

[iamc3k]

Brink,

Thanks for another great tutorial. However, it caused issues and there are some tweaks that may be needed.

First, an overview of what I did. I had a 1TB C drive and wanted to put in a 250GB SSD for the OS, and move the extras to a D drive. (Kind of standard these days.) Moving my profile over to the D drive would shrink my OS files so they'd all fit on the smaller SSD.

I did it. Your tutorial was great. (I'd previously used Kari's sysprep on a different computer, so some of this seemed familiar. I like your way better. ) I moved the one user profile on the computer (named "Kids") from C/Users to D/Users. I created a new profile with admin privileges called "Tempmove", per your instructions, and then deleted it by right-clicking on the folder and selecting "delete".

Everything seemed good. C was the new SSD, D was a spinner, and everything fit and worked.

Except my HP8630 network printer. I could print notepad, but not anything else. After troubleshooting unsuccessfully, I decided to undo the profile move.

I shrank down (and moved) my D drive User files so everything would now fit on the SSD. I followed your tutorial to undo the move. I created another profile "Temp 4 move" to allow me to move "Kids" from the D to the C drive.

It worked.

Except...I lost my desktop background image, never to be found again. Okay, that's minor. I can now print as I should.

Here's the oddity: my registry contains some entries from "Tempmove" and "Temp 4 move". They're in the Profile List location your tutorial discusses. I've included some pix, with verbiage. (In order, the jpg's should be opened as "overview", "kids", "tempmove", and then "temp 4 move".)

Can I safely delete the 4 folders from Profile List? Or can I only delete the 2 orange ones (1019 and 1020)? Or none?

Should your tutorial include a step to delete these extra profiles from the registry?

Thanks,
Ken

 

[Brink]

Hello Ken,

Since you already deleted the accounts that 1019 and 1020 belong to, it would be safe to delete only these two from the registry.

The shorter ones are system accounts used by Windows, and should not be deleted.

 

[iamc3k]

Hello Ken,

Since you already deleted the accounts that 1019 and 1020 belong to, it would be safe to delete only these two from the registry.

The shorter ones are system accounts used by Windows, and should not be deleted.

Thank you!

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome.

 

[iamc3k]

Okay...two more oddities.

No matter what I do, I keep getting a users profile added to my D drive.

Also, I used to call my user profile "All" (yeah, bad name), so I renamed it "Kids". Now, I have a user profile "All" which I cannot delete.

Of the two, the new profile folders getting created on my D drive is the more problematic. See the attached screenshots. (And, yes, I did change the registry so that all new profiles are created on the C drive.)

"D won't go" shows what gets created everytime I use my main/only profile, "kids". I can delete it (by making another admin profile), but it reappears everytime I login to "kids".

The "user folder" shows the spurious "all" which I cannot get rid of.

The "account image" shows what I see when I log in to account manager.

Ken

 

[boomhauer]

quick question if i may and sorry if i missed this while reading through the tutorial. what would happen if i were to NOT delete the original location info but leave it be? i have moved the location just now and downloaded one app. and it put it in the new location and not the old all perfectly as it should i hope but i have not logged off or shut down the system yet either so was wondering if that would open a can of worms i'd rather not fool with?

 

[Brink]

Hello boomhauer, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You don't have to delete the folder at the original location.

 

[boomhauer]

thx brink. it will have no ill side effects if left there since nothing is going to it anymore ?

 

[Brink]

No side effects. You could treat it as a backup.