Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? - Printable Version
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Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-08-2007 at 06:30 PM
Ok I have been asking a lot of questions recently... vista seems to have made me alive and interested in my computer
anyways...
I want to change the target of "My Documents" folder in Vista (which is now named as the user's name, in my case "Waqas")
how can i change its location?
I remember in XP I just right clicked the "My Documents" folder and did the "Changed Target Folder" but it isnt there in Vista, so how to do it?
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by xJ + on 06-08-2007 at 06:41 PM
right click on document
click on properties > location
RE: RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-08-2007 at 09:24 PM
quote: Originally posted by xJ +
right click on document
click on properties > location
Duh... It isnt there, that is why i am asking...
file attached
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by Nathan on 06-08-2007 at 09:26 PM
if you go to the start menu then click right click my documents, then click properties, then location.
RE: RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-08-2007 at 09:31 PM
quote: Originally posted by Napbree
if you go to the start menu then click right click my documents, then click properties, then location.
RE: RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-08-2007 at 09:46 PM
quote: Originally posted by Napbree
if you go to the start menu then click right click my documents, then click properties, then location.
NO.... It worked but half :/
I did what you said but it just put a short cut of the folder (in my case its the D: drive that I want to make) shortcut to it check the attachment
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by ShawnZ on 06-08-2007 at 09:47 PM
the "Waqas" folder isn't My Documents... they changed it so that nothing is put in my documents anymore. "Waqas" is your profile folder.
RE: RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-08-2007 at 09:51 PM
quote: Originally posted by ShawnZ
the "Waqas" folder isn't My Documents... they changed it so that nothing is put in my documents anymore. "Waqas" is your profile folder.
Hmmm.... Ok so how do I move me profile folder???
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by ShawnZ on 06-08-2007 at 10:30 PM
quote: Originally posted by WaqasTariq
Hmmm.... Ok so how do I move me profile folder???
You don't. Once you create a user, you can't effectively move your profile folder from the default "c:\users\username" (or "c:\documents and settings\username" on 2000 and xp) without losing things.
May i ask why you need to move it? there might be an easier way to solve your problem.
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by Dr4g0n on 06-08-2007 at 10:44 PM
If you want to put your Documents and such onto a separate hard drive (which is what I gather from you referring to D: earlier), then you can probably mount the other hard drive under C:\Users\Username using Disk Management.
I'd be careful though, if you do it slightly wrong you'll lose things.
Ask shawnz. =p
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-08-2007 at 10:50 PM
mount??? isnt there any easy way to do it?
I dont know how to mount
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by Adeptus on 06-09-2007 at 01:55 AM
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/move_documents_folder_to_new_location.htm
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by ShawnZ on 06-10-2007 at 01:15 AM
quote: Originally posted by Adeptus
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/move_documents_folder_to_new_location.htm
way to not read the thread, adeptus
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-12-2007 at 11:53 AM
Si I have moved Everything in the 'Personal Folder' that Vista created on my desktop (by chosing change loaction on every one of them)
Now... the proble is my Windows Mail email are still in the C:/user ?? / waqas/ ......
I want the 'Waqas' folder in the Users folder to move to D: how can I do that?
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by joemailey on 06-12-2007 at 01:19 PM
Moving your own Profile folders - The Quick and Easy Way
1. Open up your user folder (C:\Users\name)
2. Right Click on each of the folders and select properties
3. Click the location tab
4. Replace the location with the new path - ie it may currently say C:\Users\adam\Videos, so change that to D:\adam\Videos (or where ever you want the new path to point to
5. Hit apply, select Yes and then Yes again, and it will begin moving your files over to the new location, updating the registry automatically
6. Do this to all the folders inside your profile
7. From now on, when you click on Documents or Music, etc, it will point to the new location
This is fun!!!
Moving the Entire Users and Profile folders - The Complicated Way
# Make sure you have a complete backup of your system!
# Copy the original Default Profile directory to the new location (e.g. from C:\Users\Default to D:\Users\Default).
# Copy the original Public Profile directory to the new location (e.g. from C:\Users\Public to D:\Users\Public).
# Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.
# Change the value of the Default key to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users\Default).
# Change the value of the Public key to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users\Public).
# Change the value of the ProfilesDirectory to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users).
# At this point, you need to restart and log back in as a different user that has never logged in before and therefore does not have a profile created. In my case, the Administrator user had never logged in before so I enabled it so that Administrator could log in and used that. You can enable Administrator login by loading Computer Management and then go to User Accounts, edit the properties for Administrator, and then uncheck Disable Login.
# After logging in for the first time with the new user account, you will see “Creating Desktop” and other things like that while Windows is creating your profile. Note that the new profile should be created in the new location.
# After logging in, try to close as many applications as possible. This will prevent most files from being locked so that you cannot copy them.
# Copy the entire original user profiles folder from the original location to the new location (e.g. C:\Users\* to D:\Users\). (See next step after copy starts).
# There are a few things to note during this copy. There were thousands of .TMP files that were locked and would not copy. I just skipped these files. I held down Alt-S so that I could see all of the skipped files and make sure that there were only .TMP files being skipped. Yes, this took a little while, but at least I was confident that I got all of my files copied. This process could probably be made easier using the command prompt or powershell.
# If, in your case, there are some files that will not copy, you can run procexp.exe, which is file provided by sysinternals. Then do a Find Handle and search for part of the filename. procexp will tell you which programs are locking the file. As long as you closed as many programs as you could, though, this should not happen.
# Find and download a program that will do a Search & Replace on the registry. I will not suggest one because I did not find one single program that worked perfectly. I ended up downloading a few different freeware applications and using all of them.
# Using the Registry Search & Replace program, do a search for the original user profile folder and replace it with the new user profile folder (e.g. search for “C:\Users” and replace with “D:\Users”. Note that some of the applications I used would only change values and not key names. However, the keys that needed to be chagned were all related to MuiCache. I do not know if these actually need to be updated. I did just to make sure.
# Log out. Log back in with the same user. Repeat step 14 until there is nothing left to replace. The reason for this step is that on logout, some programs seem to update the registry using the old user profile path.
# Run regedit.exe and do a search for the original user profile path and make sure it does not exist. The reason for this step is because (as noted in step 13), I did not trust any of the Registry Search & Replace programs I used. I ended up needing to update about a dozen of the keys and values manually, since the search & replace missed them.
# So that you can easily find programs that do not use the registry and hard-coded profile paths, rename your original profile folder (e.g. rename C:\Users to C:\~Users).
# Log out. Log back in as your usual user. Everything should be working correctly except for programs that use a “hardcoded” user profile location.
# There are two easy methods that can be used to find programs that use a “hardcoded” profile location and are still looking for the original user profile path. You can use the procexp.exe trick mentioned above and search for handles in the original profile location. You can also monitor the oringal profile location to see if any new folders or files were created. For example, in my case, FolderShare created some folders and files in the directory C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\FolderShare\. So, I updated the FolderShare settings to point to the different path and then deleted the C:\Users directory (note that C:\~Users still existed as a backup).
# Since you are now confident that all of your data has been moved (right??????), you can deleted the backup of the original user profile location (e.g. C:\~Users)
RE: RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-13-2007 at 09:18 AM
Got what you said above...
But havent anybody wrote some program to do this
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by joemailey on 06-13-2007 at 09:23 AM
Guess not lol.
althou it could be done some how i guess. but ican't program so i can't do it
RE: Moving "my Documents" folder in Vista? by WaqasTariq on 06-14-2007 at 09:26 PM
bad for me then :/
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