Fully relocating Users tree in Windows 11

TairikuOkami said:

The worst thing that could happen is Windows booting into a black desktop, creating a temporary account.
It can happen randomly. Usually a restart solves it, if not restoring a system backup should help, so backup!

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It only happened to me when it couldn't find the D: drive and it doesn't find the user profile (like forgot to reconnect the D: drive)
After drive re connection an a little change on the register and it work as before.

Megahertz said:

Sorry, but no.
To go find thee user profile folder the system looks for %userprofile% .
Put %userprofile% on explorer and it will take you to C:\Users\"Name"
In my case it takes me to D:\Users\Luiz

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Not sure what this ("Sorry, but no.") is referring to. Can you clarify? My comment was with regard to a game creating a new Documents folder in the C: user folder after already relocating (via the normal method of moving individual folders) it to another drive. It created a new Documents folder back on C: and then out files there. That's irritating, as you can imagine, since there was a reason I had moved it. My expectation for moving the entire Users tree via Kari's methods is in part to prevent that sort of thing.

I do understand what you're saying about how the user folder via %userprofile% should be correctly reflected with Kari's method.

pseymour said:

Some developers do not get the path of a certain user folder correctly. For example, if they want the Documents folder, they'll sometimes get the path of the user's profile and tack "Documents" on the end. In reality, they should query the Windows API and ask it for the user's Documents folder.

They have permission to create the new folder, because the user always has permission to create folders in their own profile. The app/game/whatever is running as that user and can do anything the user can do.

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Rangoon said:

Not sure what this ("Sorry, but no.") is referring to. Can you clarify? My comment was with regard to a game creating a new Documents folder in the C: user folder after already relocating (via the normal method of moving individual folders) it to another drive. It created a new Documents folder back on C: and then out files there. That's irritating, as you can imagine, since there was a reason I had moved it. My expectation for moving the entire Users tree via Kari's methods is in part to prevent that sort of thing.

I do understand what you're saying about how the user folder via %userprofile% should be correctly reflected with Kari's method.

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The post was an answer to @pseymour post

Megahertz said:

The post was an answer to @pseymour post

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Well I didn't say anything about finding the user profile, the %UserProfile% environment variable, or the system being able to find the user profile. I was talking about a mistake developers often make in finding user shell folders, such as Documents.

Well, I feel stupid, but it was the wifi connection that was preventing me from making the dummy local account. I ran sysprep again, and it worked again, plus this time I could make the account and log in.

I am going through the registry and changing any C:\Users to U:\Users. So far I've come across one that errored when I went to change it. I think it was something to do with OneDrive. I'll have to check again. Will that be a concern?

I'm also seeing a long list that have C:\Users in the Value Name, not Value Data. Is that something I should be concerned with?

Is there anything else I should plan do do after the registry edits? Or should I then just delete the appdata0 folder and the dummy user account?

I also see that there is still a Users folder on my C: drive. It only contains my personal User folder (though that one also got moved to the U: drive). Inside, there is just one folder: AppData\Local\Microsoft\MicrosoftApps. There is an equivalent folder on the U: drive. Inside the C: drive instance, there are several folders and a dozen or so files. The contents did not get moved to the U: drive, but the folders did. However they are empty. Should I move all of folder contents and files over to U:? The files are executables like media player, notepad, python, etc., so can they be moved without breaking them?

I tried to uninstall OneDrive for now, but it can't be found. I'd like to make sure that's off the system temporarily, and remove all of the registry entries, then reinstall OneDrive later. It's acting messy with the Users tree move. Is it safe to just delete all registry entries that mention OneDrive? And is there a way to ensure the app itself is gone from the system? I'm concerned that Windows can't find it.