Windows 10: Post Win10 Upgrade - need to Clean Install and Move User Folders

This is my first post and I figured I'd start in this forum, and apologize if I've chosen incorrectly.

Here is my issue: Recently my Windows 7 Ultimate machine upgraded itself to Windows 10 with no input from me. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how that happened since my Users Folder was already on a different drive and everything I read indicated that I should have the user drive on the 'C:' drive before upgrading. Post upgrade I found that I now have two User Folders, one on the C: drive and the original one on the D: drive but have two 'Public' folders, one on C: and one on D:.

This seems to be Okay, as the machine is still working satisfactorily, but this is going to become confusing and I would like to rectify it before it does. My reason for needing to correct this is, when the machine was a Windows 7 Ultimate, I installed an SSD which is rather small (180 GB) and moved the 'SYSTEM' to that drive and moved all the other data to the regular HDD (2 TB), which is partitioned as two slaved drives 'D and E', one for User Data (D) and the other for Programs (E) and I want to continue that setup which up to this point has worked perfectly for my current needs.

So that end, I would like to do the following, but am unsure as how to proceed.

I would like to do a 'Clean Install of Windows 10' and move the 'Users Folder' to Drive D in the process.

I have read both tutorials on doing a Clean Install and Moving the Users Folder but have encountered some issues and do not want to proceed until I have a clear answer on how to proceed.

In the 'Moving the Users Folder the tutorial mentions using the 'Install.wim' file to create an answerfile for sysprep. However, after using the Microsoft Media Tool to create an 'ISO' image I find that there is no 'install.wim' file but instead only an 'install.esd' file. I read that changing the selection in the tool from 'USB' to 'Create media for a new computer' should result in an 'install.wim' file, but investigation after the 'ISO' file creation still shows an 'install.esd' file, so I'm not sure exactly how to handle this matter. I know that I need to create an answer file, etc., but in this case I'm at a stopping point without further guidance.

So that's the situation, I need to perform a 'Clean Install of Windows 10' on my machine which has already been upgraded to Windows 10 Pro from Windows 7 and in the process I need to have the Users Folder moved to another drive in order to ensure that all of my files are preserved.

Thanks in advance for any assistance from the talented individuals on this website and forum that you may be able to provide.

:)

 

How do I migrate a Windows 7 User to a Windows 10 clean install

When I installed Win7, I moved my users folder to a different partition using

mklink /J U:/Users C:/Users

Before I did my Win10 free upgrade, I reversed the process so that my actual Users folders were untouched. (NOTE: this was required because the Win10 free upgrade kept giving me errors with the windows junction in place) Then I
reversed the upgrade and did a clean Win10 install in a new partition so I could dual boot. Everything works fine at the moment, but the Win10 install points to a generic C:\Users folder

I would like to migrate my Win7 Users data/folder to Win10
in a different partition, but I am not sure how to best accomplish this goal.

• simple 'mklink /J C:/Users U:/Users'? (same as Win7?)
• relocate the Users/Documents folder to point to the same location in Win7?
• is there an official migration utilitiy?
• other approach?

Do I have to add the SAME Win7 users to Win10 before doing so?

 

Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 upgrade with user folder on a different drive.

I have windows 8.1 system files and executables on an SSD and the user folder is located on a different drive. i did this by doing a clean install of windows 8.1 and then moved the user folder over to D drive before I even created an account. Can I just
upgrade my computer with the configuration I have or do I need to do a clean install and then move the user folder the way I did it in windows 8.1?

 

Hi MichaelG7355 and welcome to Tenforums.

I can answer the above question by pointing you to a very good tutorial on how to create the install.wim from the install.esd here:

ESD to ISO - Create Bootable ISO from Windows 10 ESD File - Windows 10 Forums

If you have any questions about that procedure, you can post directly in that thread, and @Kari, the author will have an answer for you, I'm sure.