Documents & Settings on other partition, C:\ still gets filled, whatabout roaming?

Hello,

this is WinXP Pro/SP2.

I have my "Documents and Settings" on a separate partition. I have
configured this with the aid of TweakUI and, if memory serves me
correctly, by other means. I work with this setup since a few years
without any problems. One thing, however, slipped through my control,
and that is the home-directory, as set somehwere in the system's
configuration. I guess it must have been a registry-entry. Whatever...

The problem is, that most if not all of my "Documents and Settings" get
mirrored on "C:\Documents and Settings". It also may have to do with the
roaming, that I once tested via an SMB share. So, what happens is, that
my system-partition always gets filled up with my user-directory, where
the reason for the seperate partition was to circumvent exactly this.

Does this sound familiare? Did anyone experience this? How exactly does
the path handling function in the user-profile roaming (ie:
user-directory on network share)? I have no network share in work right
now, but since we are here, that would be something, that may come into
interest in the next weeks. Will Windows keep something locally?

Thanks.

--
Bye,
Andreas M.

On Thu, 29 May 2008 02:22:38 +0200, Andreas M. wrote in message
<news:g1kt04$emh$1@news.albasani.net>:

> Hello,
>
> this is WinXP Pro/SP2.
>
> I have my "Documents and Settings" on a separate partition. I have
> configured this with the aid of TweakUI and, if memory serves me
> correctly, by other means. I work with this setup since a few years
> without any problems. One thing, however, slipped through my control,
> and that is the home-directory, as set somehwere in the system's
> configuration. I guess it must have been a registry-entry. Whatever...
>
> The problem is, that most if not all of my "Documents and Settings" get
> mirrored on "C:\Documents and Settings". It also may have to do with the
> roaming, that I once tested via an SMB share. So, what happens is, that
> my system-partition always gets filled up with my user-directory, where
> the reason for the seperate partition was to circumvent exactly this.
>
> Does this sound familiare? Did anyone experience this? How exactly does
> the path handling function in the user-profile roaming (ie:
> user-directory on network share)? I have no network share in work right
> now, but since we are here, that would be something, that may come into
> interest in the next weeks. Will Windows keep something locally?
>
> Thanks.

Try right-clicking the Documents and Settings folder on the C:\ drive and
under 'Properties' select Attributes > Hidden.

See also:

"How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp

Maybe not the perfect solution, but it might help a little.

On 31.05.2008 19:37 Iceman wrote

> Try right-clicking the Documents and Settings folder on the C:\ drive and
> under 'Properties' select Attributes > Hidden.

Thanks, but that is not a good solution, because Firefox is, while
writing all its profile-data to my desired location, writing the cache
to the profile dir it created in "C:\Documents and
Settings\user\Application Data\Local Settings\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\etc."

It is interesting to note, that my application settings are being
mirrored (and paritally being written only to) the "Local
Settings\Application Data\" on C:\Documents and Settings, while I most
of this content is on F:\user\Application Data\. F:\Local
Settings\Application Data however is nearly empty.

--
Bye,
Andreas M.

I may have been a bit unclear. I will try to line out the problem a bit
more.

The background is, that I have "Program Files", %TEMP%, pagefile and
hibernation file, as well as "Documents and Settings" on other
partitions than C:\

TweakUI allows to set these (under "My Computer/Special Folders"). One
can configure folders for "CD Burning", Desktop, Document Templates,
Installation Path, Favorites, My Documents, Shared Documents, Startmenu
and so on. With another tweak util or some editing in the registry (I do
not remember, it was a few years ago, that I did this), one can set the
complete root for the "Documents and Settings" to another place. This I did.

However, somewhere is another mention of the path. An example for that
would be, that

C:\> echo %USERPROFILE%

results in
C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm

though, I have configured it to be
F:\andreasm

everywhere else.

"Local Settings" on F:\ is nearly empty, instead "Application Data" is
to be found within F:\andreasm\Application Data and not
F:\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data (which exists, but is nearly
emtpy).

Now some programs evaluate %USERPROFILE%. What is even more wired is,
that they write to both:

F:\andreasm\Application Data

and
C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data\

while "C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Application Data" is nearly
unused. Some programs only write some special stuff to

C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data\

for example, Firefox writes all the the profile directory at
F:\andreasm\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xyz.Default\

except its cache, which it writes to the profile on C:\ within
"C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xyz.Default\"

Phew. ;-)

So, my questions are:

Why the difference of
C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data

and
F:\andreasm\Application Data

(nb: F:\andreasm is equivalent to Documents and Settings\andreasm\)

and why does some software use both directories, while writing parts to
one, parts to the other and why is, in addition, my complete
F:\Documents and Settings\andreasm

being mirrored in
C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data

Thanks.

--
Bye,
Andreas M.

Here is a neat simple way of moving complete "Documents and Settings"
folder to another drive/partition under XP. It works by mounting your
destination partition/drive on empty "Documents and Settings" folder on
system drive. This tweak is transparent to Windows which asumes business
as usual. Applications with hard coded paths to these folders are
therefore not affected either. It also avoids registry tweaks,
temporary or permanent, which reading the forums always seem to fail at
some point. No re-formatting & no swopping between user accounts either.


It's been tested using XP Pro + SP3 although should work with other XP
variants. The secret is to make a recovery disc (CD/DVD) which is a
useful thing to have anyway. See here http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ for
how to do this using BartPE with XPE plug-in. Booting with this allows
copying of all folders in Documents and Settings as none are in use by
Windows.

So boot from the recovery disc, changing BIOS if necessary to achieve
CD boot. To save altering BIOS again make sure secondary boot device is
set to hard disc.

It takes a while but you should eventually see BartPE desktop with
Windows style icons & autohide Start bar at the top. Click on My
Computer & check you can see system drive (assume it's C plus the
drive/partition for your new Documents and Settings location. Open C:
drive to view & select Tools/Folder Options/View tab; select View
hidden files radio button & untick hide System files & Folders. You
will get a warning as soon as you do this but just hit Yes, Apply & Ok.


Open Document and Settings, select all & copy to your intended
partition/drive. Note that copying them to another dedicated folder is
not an option, they must be in the location root. For this reason it
may be best to use dedicated, empty partition/drive, although I used a
backup partition holding several other files already. Just make sure
that you respect the folders you copy across & that there are none with
the same name already. You will have copied at least five folders as
follows:
All Users
Default User (hidden)
LocalService (hidden system)
NetworkService (hidden system)
User(s) (file as named by user with one for each account created)

Having checked you have copied the full contents, change the name of
"Documents and Settings" folder on your system drive to say "My Stuff"
- this will be a backup which could be deleted later when all is tested
& proven. Create new folder on system drive & rename it "Documents and
Settings", this must remain empty.

Go to Start/Control panel, open “Administrator Tools”;
Select “Computer Management” and go into the “Disk
Management” item. All your drives & partitions should be listed
so right-click on the partition/drive you copied Documents and Settings
to & select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…” from the
menu. In the new dialog box click the “Add” button. Another
dialog box will open, browse to your newly created "Documents and
Settings” folder and click OK.

Exit & open your new "Documents and Settings" folder. Although this
won't appear with drive icon until you reboot, you should see the full
contents of the partition/drive you moved your Documents and Settings
to.

If all ok, re-boot normally removing the recovery disc first. The
"Documents & Settings" folder on your system drive will now have a
drive icon with the partition/drive you copied your Documents and
Settings to mounted to it.

Although not tested, "Program Files" folder could be moved in the same
way, with new location mounted to empty folder of same name on system
drive. This would allow easy backing up, & once de-fragged the system
drive would generally remain so as remaining system only files are
changed less often.

Good luck!


--
richardhula
------------------------------------------------------------------------
richardhula's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/member.php?userid=51371
View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=977139

http://forums.techarena.in