During copy get NTUSER.DAT in use error

[Guest]

Trying to copy my Documents Folder from C-drive to E-drive and get Error
"cannot copy NTUSER.DAT is in use. Copy then stops. What can I do about it?
Using XP.

 

[Vanguard]

Trying to copy my Documents Folder from C-drive to E-drive and get Error
"cannot copy NTUSER.DAT is in use. Copy then stops. What can I do about
it?
Using XP.

That is the user portion of the registry. Since your registry for your
account is inuse while you are logged in, you cannot copy that file. You
need to logon under Account #1 to copy Account #2's profile into Account
#3's profile. That is, you need an arbitration account to copy accounts
atop each other and where the arbitration account is not of those you are
copying. You don't copy any of the arbitration account's files. You copy
the files for the account(s) under which you are NOT logged in. You could
use, for example, the Administrator account to copy your account's profile
(My Documents is a path under %userprofile%).

 

[Wouter Willemse]

There is very little use in trying to copy this file, placing it somewhere
else will make the user account to which it belongs unusable.
Windows needs this file (badly) to load the user profile.

Best leave this file alone. If you want to copy documents etc., just copy
only the "my documents" folder and leave all other stuff in documents and
settings alone. Windows needs a lot of these files, and it expects it to be
where they were.
(it is possible to change the location for the entire document and setting
stuff, but you'll spend tons of time editing your registry).

 

[Vanguard]

There is very little use in trying to copy this file, placing it somewhere
else will make the user account to which it belongs unusable.
Windows needs this file (badly) to load the user profile.

There is if you want a duplicate of your profile under another account.
Then when (and not if) your profile gets corrupted, you can login under the
other account and it will be setup based on the last time you copied the
profile.

 

[Wouter Willemse]

OK, fair enough. Under user management you can copy user profiles.
Maybe that's the easy way to do it?