Moving user profile location in Windows Vista

  • Section(s): Deployment, Administration
  • Published on Jul 08, 2008.
  • Last Modified on Jul 03, 2008.
  • Last Modified by Mitch Tulloch.
  • Rated 1 out of 5 based on 2 votes.
How to move the location where user profiles are stored in Windows Vista.

A common question is how you can move the default location where user profiles are stored in Windows Visty from the C:\Users directory to some other location, for example a second hard drive named D: or perhaps elsewhere.

Unfortunately, if you want to do this after you’ve installed Vista on the system, the answer is you can’t. Or more specifically, there’s no supported way of doing this, so don’t even try hacking around in this regard.

However, you can do this during the installation process by configuring a setting named ProfilesDirectory in your unattend.xml answer file, and this is the only supported method for moving the profile directory in Vista.

About Mitch Tulloch

Mitch Tulloch was lead author for the Windows Vista Resource Kit from Microsoft Press, which is the book for IT pros who want to deploy, maintain and support Windows Vista in mid- and large-sized network environments. Mitch was also the author of Introducing Windows Server 2008 and technical project lead for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit, both books also from Microsoft Press. For more information on these and other books by Mitch, see www.mtit.com .

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