Change default locations for Documents & Settings

Swordfish · 1 Sep 2008 at 11:37

Hi all.

As title says I am looking for a method to change the default locations of all the documents and settings for users on a windows xp machine.

Up till now I use TweakUI and set the locations for the my docs/desktop/favourites etc to the new drive and everything is fine.

Thing is if I decide to add a new user to the PC I have to go through this all again. Is there a way to set up my second drive (Call it D

so that when a new users is added all the the data that is normally stored on C:\Documents and Settings\Username\ will be D:\Documents and Settings\Username?

Is it as simple as changing the default location for Documents and Settings folder?

Cheers

Swordfish · 1 Sep 2008 at 11:56

Anyone? THe only way I can see to do this is by making an unattended disc and setting the detail then.

bledd · 1 Sep 2008 at 12:18

afaik, that's the only safe way to do it

UKDTweak · 1 Sep 2008 at 12:23

Create a new account, change the settings you require, log out then log is as admin and copy the account to the default user?

bledd · 1 Sep 2008 at 12:57

the thing is, there could be many txt entries for C:\doucments and settings in the registry (i suppose your could search for them all and replace manually)

safer to use the unattended method imo

Fibre_Optic · 1 Sep 2008 at 13:54

I do this on ALL customers PC's.
You just have to do a registry search for: Documents and Settings and change the C: to whatever partition you want the documents and settings moved too.
You also have to change \Device\HarddiskVolume1\Documents and Settings\ so if you want it on D then you change HarddiskVolume1 --> HarddiskVolume2 or HarddiskVolume3 for :E ...etc ..etc

But before you do all this you need to copy Documents and Settings from C drive onto the partition you want to relocate it too, you can do this by setting up a dummy user account as obviously you cannot copy certain files that windows will have a handle on. Personally I find it much easier to just boot up with a Pre-installer (SuperWinPE 2004 or 2005, BartPE should work also) and just copy the files across.

It sounds hard/time consuming but I can do it now in about 5mins but you MUST do this straight after a fresh install otherwise you will have shed loads of enteries to change in the registry.

Once all the above is done any new User accounts will automatically be place in the new location and NOT on C.
It's great because it means you can create a Ghost restore CD/DVD and when a customer needs to restore they lose NO files what-so-ever, all their e-mails, bookmarks, desktop files...etc ..etc are exactly like they were before the software crash :-)

Swordfish · 1 Sep 2008 at 18:44

Cheers for this inof Fibre_Optic. THis is exactly why I want to do this. I do around 20 PC's and laptops a week and like the option on 3 partitioons , Windows / Data / Acronis or Ghost hidden.

Will try this later tonight on my laptop. Due for new install awayway.

CHeers to all replies.