Windows 10: Restoring Users or Profile folders

Currently on Windows 10 x64 Pro v2004 build 19041.572
Problem occurs also in v1909

In February in setup my new system with the system drive on an SSD and the Users folder on a HDD following Kari's wonderful tutorial. No problems there. All working splendidly. However after a few weeks I started doing some benchmarks and discovered that the HDD was reporting a 3.0Gb/s interface although the manufacturer (Hitachi/WD) doesn't offer that drive in SATA II. I contacted the vendor and they cross shipped me a new drive which checked out with a 6.0GB/s interface.

So simple, I just format the new drive, copy everything over and swap them out, boot up in WinRE or WinPE and make sure the replacement drive is assigned to D:. Well not quite. After restarting from WinRE Windows started up and halted with:

The User Profile Service service failed the sign-in
User profile cannot be loaded.

Eh? So I restart WinRE and try to fix startup problems. No dice. So I fire up Clonezilla and clone the old drive onto the new. Some 16-20 hours later (I don't remember, don't want to). Other than a UUID conflict Windows boots fine and runs fine.

Having some time on my hands a couple months later I decided to look at the phenomenon. I created a Win10 VM under Virtualbox with the Users folder on drive "D". Here's what I found:

Creating a new Users folder after deleting or renaming the original results in the User Profile Service lockup at startup. It doesn't matter how you copy everything from the original Windows still gives the error. If you rename the old folder back to Users sometimes Windows will start up normally. Most of the time you get the Service error or sometimes Windows will start but with the temporary desktop/account loop.

Creating a new copy of a profile/account folder usually results in the temporary desktop/account loop. Most of the time I had been unable to repair this.

Restoring the drive from a backup image does not cause problems. I'm using Novastor's Novabackup Image Backup.

I would like to format my D: drive as the MFT has gotten bloated to just under 4GB. However if I format the drive and restore the folders and files Windows will not start because of the Profile service error.

However, with Novastor's imaging backup I was able to make a VM using images of my system and D drive. By using Kari's Method 2 for moving the Users folder I was able (on the VM) to move the Users folder to another drive. Format the D drive and restore (from backup) all the files except the Users folder tree. I then moved the Users folder back to the D drive and all seems well. The MFT shrank to a comfortable ~200MB. Windows starts and the desktop comes up. The start menu and everything works. The only thing is I have to re-pin applications, recreate toolbars and what icons show on the toolbar.

Moving the Users folder on a running system has some risk although I wouldn't do it without image backups.

Is there an easier less risk prone way to restore or recreate the Users and profile folders or shrink the MFT?

As far as shrinking the MFT I tried sdelete and ccleaner to wipe the unused portions of the MFT, contig64 and various de-fragmenting programs. Contig wouldn't defragment the MFT although UltraDefrag would. However none of these would shrink the MFT.

Sorry for the long post. I hope what I posted makes sense *Biggrin

:)

 

Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10  

If not the best way to do that but at least the way I recommend:

• "Empty" your user profile folders as much as you can, copying documents, pics, videos, music and all other personal data from all user profiles to external HDD. As following steps require you to relocate Users folder two times, the less data is left in user profile folders, the faster the relocation process. Important: Leave system folder AppData for each profile intact, do not empty / move its content!
• Reverse the relocating, doing exactly as told in tutorial Method Two but this time relocating Users folder back to C: drive
• Shut down the PC, replace the disk where you had Users relocated
• Mount the new disk, boot to Windows, assign new disk the same drive ID letter than the old one had
• Again, do as told in Method Two, now relocating Users to new disk
• Restore the backed up personal user data from external drive to respective folders under each user profile

 

User Profile Service failed

To resolve your concern, we suggest that you follow these steps:

• Copy the Default folder (in C:\Users) from another windows 10 computer.
• Rename the Default folder to something like DefaultOLD (just to keep it for safety reasons).
  
• Paste it in your Users folder.
• To make sure that you won't have problems with permissions of the "implant" folder, just transfer it via a FAT/FAT32 formatted USB stick (those filesystems don't have permissions).

This will provide solution to the error User Profile Service failed.

Let us know if you need more assistance.

 

Hide or Show User Profile's Personal Folders in Navigation Pane

Hello Brink and thank you. This website is a very helpful resource.

Your suggested answer will hide the User Profile folder in the Navigation Pane.

Instead, this scenario involves not hiding the User Profile folder but hiding specific Personal Folders in the Navigation Pane that are marked "Hidden" in the Files/Folders Listing Area.

My suspicion is that there are more "PinToNamespace" registry entries for me to toggle the DWORD value.