[frf954]

Hello,

I want to move and rename my H:\Documents and Settings\ and subfolders to a new partition T:\users\ and I have already made a .reg patch to do that but when I want to copy all the files from the old partition to the new one, all the file of that kind: NTUSER.DAT NTUSER.DAT.LOG UsrClass.DAT just can't be read or moved.
I know these files are some kind of registry hives and contain HKCU maybe and my patch only contain H:\Documents and Settings\ referances from HKEY_LOCALMACHINE and HKEY_USERS. (note I have created a temporary admin acount to do this)

But, my questions would be:

1-Does NTUSER.DAT NTUSER.DAT.LOG UsrClass.DAT files need to be copied necessarily in order to achieve my goal ?
2-Or will they be automatically generated when I log on after my patch will be applied and reboot to usual acounts?
3-Is there a way to force copy all those files in WINDOWS XP?
4-Must I copy those files from linux (partition, livecd, usb)?

thanks.

[Tripredacus]

frf954, on 19 September 2012 - 07:54 AM, said:

all the file of that kind: NTUSER.DAT NTUSER.DAT.LOG UsrClass.DAT just can't be read or moved.

If you do this, you'll have to do it when the OS is offline (aka boot to some other media). These files can't be moved while in use. BUT note that if this is done incorrectly, you could end up blowing up your Windows install... so maybe make a backup before continuing on with this. My question is WHY would you want to do this at all?

[frf954]

Quote

If you do this, you'll have to do it when the OS is offline (aka boot to some other media). These files can't be moved while in use. BUT note that if this is done incorrectly, you could end up blowing up your Windows install... so maybe make a backup before continuing on with this.

I know this I backup my datas and registry with ERUNT and i have made a restore point before. I hope it wont go wrong. And if it does I will have to recheck all and try again and again. I have already headaching for days what registry entries to modify so as to do this. and I won't progress if I don't try. It is said to be possible on some MS sites and others but not exactly what I want to do.

Quote

My question is WHY would you want to do this at all?

I have already explain this on this here :

but to sum up:

1-I want to rename, remove spaces and shorten paths in Documents and settings

2-Because windows XP always corrupt itself between 3 month and 1 year and in order to make xp faster I want to split my instalation into several partitions like this:

[HARDDISK1] : highly fragmentable data and lot of read/write cycles
P:\ windows swap pagefile
T:\ windows users profiles (home)

[HARDDISK2] low fragmentable data
H:\ windows main
J:\ user's personal (my documents)

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

frf954, I see this question as a followup to this thread. So I know you already understand the complexities.. I am just repeating here several of the key points for others that may just be reading now. Please report back your progress! I always wanted to try this myself. ( btw, I did not yet extract and expand every WinXP cabinet. It is still on the drawing board )

There are times when COPY makes a lot more sense than MOVE. This would be one of those times

And yes, as Tripredacus says, this is only easily done offline. The disk can be placed in another computer and the folder structure copied. Or the computer booted up with a CD/DVD which has its own operating system plus tools for accessing NTFS disks and do the copy from there ( a perfect job for DaRT / ERD if you have these tools ).

After you are done copying you will want to keep an eye on the last accessed times of the files in the original location to see if they are used anymore. If they are, that MOVE operation would have proved destructive. If they are not, it means all is okay.

You say you made a REG patch to change references to the original profile path. The normal strings in the registry are easy to locate and edit. Did you also check all the Expand_SZ strings? There also may be references inside files on disk ( INI, CFG, etc ) to the original path.

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY: There may be a kludge method of duplicating uncopyable registry files. See this image I posted in this thread ...

Spoiler

That is a snapshot of the temporary files ( copies of the registry ) on WinXP written to C:\Documents and Settings\(USER)\Local Settings\Temp by the program called RegCompact. It was just a fast experiment to see what would happen. The registry files would need to be renamed of course. But it does bring up the possibility of using something like this or maybe NTRegOpt or ERUNT to maybe be able to grab copies of those locked files while still in Windows on the computer in question. Obviously more experimentation would be required to know for sure. Also note that in that experiment I was simply using the Win9x version of RegCompact, but be aware there are versions designed for WinXP but I have never used them. Read that post for more information. But I believe the idea is sound, using a registry compaction tool which reads in and writes out this registry while in Windows and saves them temporarily before using them on the next reboot. Intercepting them before this step is the key, and it has worked successfully on Win9x.