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Moving User Profile Directory

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by d'arcy

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We are running a Windows 2000 Server box with Citrix Metaframe installed on it. The system partition is 4 G, and only has about 200 Mb left. All the space is being eaten up by multiple user profiles. We are running out of room to apply service packs and such. Microsoft says there is no supported way to move the profile directory (c:\documents and settings) to another drive or directory after installation of W2K. Is there an unsupported way? Is there any implications in just moving the whole directory structure to the e:\ drive, and changing all references within the registry?

8 replies

by maxwell edison

Greetings,

Windows allows you to redirect most things which are located in the profile to other places. This is called Folder Redirection. In the GPO editor you even find a plug-in where you can define the location for (only) 4 folders. Well there are many more in the users profile directory, just have a look. In the registry we find:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
\Software\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\Explorer
\User Shell Folders

This key contains a long list of folders which can be redirected. By default all these entries point to folder in:

%USERPROFILE%\...

as expected. Logon time can be improved massively by moving as much material as possible out of the profile into a directory which gets shared from the server. In our setup we keep these folders a special subdirectory in the users home share called Windows Config. So we change the Folder Redirection settings to:

%LOGONSERVER%\home\%USERNAME%\Windows Config\...

Only the Local Settings and Temp directories should remain in the profile. By default these folders do not get roamed. They stay local on each machine and are therefor no problem for us. They can even be removed if space is tight and will get recreated when the user logs in again. The folders that do not get roamed are controlled by:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT
\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

"ExcludeProfileDirs" =
"Local Settings;Temporary Internet Files;History;Temp"

(continued in comments...)

by maxwell edison

.
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The only thing that remains in the users profile is the registry database: nutuser.dat.

We have defined a home directory for each user in his active directory account and have set the profile path to

%LOGONSERVER%\home\%USERNAME%\profile

Now we have a second directory in every users home:

%LOGONSERVER%\home\%USERNAME%\Windows Config

Note, that we have chosen to redirect My Documents to

%LOGONSERVER%\home\%USERNAME%\data

To make sure it stays separate from the application configuration data.

--------------------------------------------
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The preceding came from an article titled, "User Profile Management", which can be found in ite entirety at the following link:
http://www.isg.ee.ethz.ch/tools/realmen/det/skel.en.html

(REMOVE SPACES from the pasted URL)

Best of luck,

Maxwell

by curacao_dejavu

answer #1 is pretty detailed.
I have the same situation with nt-server + citrix.
I would add the following: research which part of the profiles folder is taken up space.
In my case I found out that the temporary internet folders were taking the space ( of the users that are surfing a lot, I didn't find the fix for that yet, I am deleting all "temporary internet folders , except all users, default user and the one of the domain administrator), also people were saving their .pst on the server instead of their homedirectory (fix:simply move their .pst). And some were saving "stuff" on their desktop.

So far it's simply maintenance, while searching for the IE fix.

Leopold

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