how to relocate Document & Settings folder from C drive to D drive?

[cfman]

HI all,

I want to relocate this Document & Settings folder from C drive to D drive
permanently.

Some Adware hijacked my computer and I had to reinstall windows XP.

Everytime I forgot to make copies of some of my documents on the C drive
before I format C Drive.

I know I will need to reinstall Windows XP in the future(Windows
sucks. My years of using Windows is a long story of keeping reinstalling
Windows...).

I don't want to make this mistake again. I want to relocate all
data/document/personal stuff to D drive, instead of the C drive. So in the
future, after I format C drive, my personal data/documents will be left
intact.

However I've noticed that folders such as "LocalSettings/Temp/*.*" tend to
have virus/adware/spyware etc. if things go wrong on the PC. So I want these
temporary parts(which are not my personal
data/bookmarks/documents/emails/news, etc.) stay on C drive and get
formatted, but those personal data/documents go to D drive.

How can I do it efficiently and safely?

Thanks a lot!

 

[Guest]

I believe this can be done (search technet for info on profile-root
relocation) but it's unsupported and may lead to 'issues'

Other thing is, it shouldn't be done for a system with existings users and
apps, becuase some apps set absolute-paths into the profile. Thus if you
relocate the profile after the app is installed, these (unruly) apps will
continue to store data in the old location regardless.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

HI all,

I want to relocate this Document & Settings folder from C drive to D drive
permanently.

Some Adware hijacked my computer and I had to reinstall windows XP.

Everytime I forgot to make copies of some of my documents on the C drive
before I format C Drive.

I know I will need to reinstall Windows XP in the future(Windows
sucks. My years of using Windows is a long story of keeping reinstalling
Windows...).

I don't want to make this mistake again. I want to relocate all
data/document/personal stuff to D drive, instead of the C drive. So in the
future, after I format C drive, my personal data/documents will be left
intact.

However I've noticed that folders such as "LocalSettings/Temp/*.*" tend to
have virus/adware/spyware etc. if things go wrong on the PC. So I want these
temporary parts(which are not my personal
data/bookmarks/documents/emails/news, etc.) stay on C drive and get
formatted, but those personal data/documents go to D drive.

How can I do it efficiently and safely?

Thanks a lot!

Simply right-click "My Documents" on the desktop, then specify
a new location.

To avoid the pain of reloading Windows regularly, invest in an
imaging product such as Acronis or Ghost.

Please take it easy with your cross-post. Such a simple question
hardly justifies then many newsgroups you've posted it to.

 

[Guest]

Without getting into the often childish arguments - you may want to look at
preventing the issue rather than looking at future ways of getting a cure.

Monitor what you go on carefully, keep Windows up-to-date, a good AV (I
personally use F-PROT which I can't fault), a cheap hardware firewall is
recommened (in particular with SPI) and if you do go onto a number of sites
that contain nasties - or prehaps you share with your family / kids? -
considor using Firefox instead. (At least until IE7 is released)

Also, there's a number of great products for clean the muck left over such
as Lavasoft Adware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/) - personal is free.
Also try SpyBot - Search and Destroy. Free and has a good imunize utility on
it.

I could go to a number of website right now that would destory my machine in
seconds if I wasn't using the above, (mainly SP2 that blocks the stuff now) -
but I can't say i've had anything malicious enter our network in the past 3
years or so now.

Cheers,


Steve.

 

[Guest]

To avoid the pain of reloading Windows regularly, invest in
an
imaging product such as Acronis or Ghost.

Are these what they call 1:1 copy, image copy software?

There is lot of stuff on the internet about true 1:1 copy
software, very confusing, I guess all it does is copy what
ever is on the HDD say C drive, including any bugs, and
makes an image like an ISO which you can put back on to
the C drive HDD if need be?

Are these things simple to use, or tricky?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

They are imaging products. I have used the Acronis
products extensively - they are easy to use. Note that
you need a target drive - either a second partition on
your internal disk or an external USB disk. You might
even be able to write the image to a DVD - check the
documentation.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your reply

They sound like a very useful application, I am reading up on Acronis now.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I agree. The OP is trying to cure a symptom not the problem.

cfman -

Redirecting My Documents is only part of the solution. You also have to
redirect the email store and any programs that have custom folders for
storing data. To fix the real problem you have to either change your habits,
harden your computer, or better yet both. The problem is that you keep
getting malware. Solve this first.

 

[cfman]

Without getting into the often childish arguments - you may want to look
at
preventing the issue rather than looking at future ways of getting a cure.

Monitor what you go on carefully, keep Windows up-to-date, a good AV (I
personally use F-PROT which I can't fault), a cheap hardware firewall is
recommened (in particular with SPI) and if you do go onto a number of
sites
that contain nasties - or prehaps you share with your family / kids? -
considor using Firefox instead. (At least until IE7 is released)

Also, there's a number of great products for clean the muck left over such
as Lavasoft Adware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/) - personal is free.
Also try SpyBot - Search and Destroy. Free and has a good imunize utility
on
it.

I could go to a number of website right now that would destory my machine
in
seconds if I wasn't using the above, (mainly SP2 that blocks the stuff
now) -
but I can't say i've had anything malicious enter our network in the past
3
years or so now.

Cheers,

I can show you for many malware, the famous Lavasoft Adware SE just failed
myserably. SypBot too. I've tried many. The final result was after wasting a
lot of time on these softwares, I still had to reformat and reinstall.

 

[cfman]

I agree. The OP is trying to cure a symptom not the problem.

cfman -

Redirecting My Documents is only part of the solution. You also have to
redirect the email store and any programs that have custom folders for
storing data. To fix the real problem you have to either change your
habits, harden your computer, or better yet both. The problem is that you
keep getting malware. Solve this first.

I deem it as a complimentary measure if Adware, AntiVirus, etc. fail.

I need not only relocating "My Documents", but also the whole "Documents &
Settings", except those "temp" folders. What shall I do? Please advise.

 

[cfman]

Thank you for your help!

Simply right-click "My Documents" on the desktop, then specify
a new location.

I need not only relocating "My Documents", but also the whole "Documents &
Settings", except those "temp" folders. What shall I do? Please advise.

To avoid the pain of reloading Windows regularly, invest in an
imaging product such as Acronis or Ghost.

Two problems with these imaging software:

1. They will lose my changes between last imaging date and today the damage
date. Esp. when "Documents & Settings" are on C drive, if I made an image of
the C drive 10 days ago, and my PC got screwed today and then I restore
using the image, my changes to all the documents & settings will be lost for
the past 10 days.

This is the fundamental problem with "Document & Settings" residing on C
drive. Very problemetic.

2. To solve the problem 1, you have to make imaging more frequently. Say
once every 3 days. Then the problem is that most AntiVirus and AntiMalware
softwares are not effective. When we raise problems like this on the
newsgroups, many answers assumed the user had no antivirus/anti-malware
software residing on their PC. This is false. Today almost everybody has
several combinations of Antivirus/anti-malware software "protecting" his PC.
For me, I had "Symantac Corporate Version" and "Lavasoft Adware SE" and "Spy
Sweeper" and frequently did "Trend Micro online scan". They just got
sudden-blind on certain malwares and even they could find they just fail to
remove the mal-ware/trojan while the trojan/mal-ware kept regenerate
themselves and making damages.

Thus if the frequency of making C drive images is once every 3 days, it may
be well possible that you also make images including the virus/mal-ware.
Then when you restore, you inevitably restored the virus/mal-ware/trojan
also.

---------------------------

See my point? All in all, as a complimentary measure, the "Document &
Settings" folder should not be on C drive, except those "temp" folders.

Please advise.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

Thus if the frequency of making C drive images is once every 3 days, it may
be well possible that you also make images including the virus/mal-ware.
Then when you restore, you inevitably restored the virus/mal-ware/trojan
also.

This is something I'm always trying to convince business-users of, that
having a single backup isn't enough. They often can't see this point though!

As for relocating data, I simply don't use "My Documents." I use a separate
partition or network share. Doesn't cover the issue of email if you use
Outlook Express, however there are other email clients which will store the
mail where you tell them to.

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

Thank you for your help!


I need not only relocating "My Documents", but also the whole "Documents &
Settings", except those "temp" folders. What shall I do? Please advise.


Two problems with these imaging software:

1. They will lose my changes between last imaging date and today the damage
date. Esp. when "Documents & Settings" are on C drive, if I made an image of
the C drive 10 days ago, and my PC got screwed today and then I restore
using the image, my changes to all the documents & settings will be lost for
the past 10 days.

This is the fundamental problem with "Document & Settings" residing on C
drive. Very problemetic.

2. To solve the problem 1, you have to make imaging more frequently. Say
once every 3 days. Then the problem is that most AntiVirus and AntiMalware
softwares are not effective. When we raise problems like this on the
newsgroups, many answers assumed the user had no antivirus/anti-malware
software residing on their PC. This is false. Today almost everybody has
several combinations of Antivirus/anti-malware software "protecting" his PC.
For me, I had "Symantac Corporate Version" and "Lavasoft Adware SE" and "Spy
Sweeper" and frequently did "Trend Micro online scan". They just got
sudden-blind on certain malwares and even they could find they just fail to
remove the mal-ware/trojan while the trojan/mal-ware kept regenerate
themselves and making damages.

Thus if the frequency of making C drive images is once every 3 days, it may
be well possible that you also make images including the virus/mal-ware.
Then when you restore, you inevitably restored the virus/mal-ware/trojan
also.

If you are worried about a file becoming corrupted and not noticing for
several days you could use an external backup drive, like the Maxtor
OneTouch, and the included software. This places each day's changes in
separate files so that you could restore the last known good copy.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I don't know of any way to do what you want. If you find a way it will not
solve your problem. You have to stop getting malware on your computer. That
is the problem you need to solve. Anti-malware software can help but the
most important part of the solution is changing your habits. You need an
active firewall, a resident anti-virus, and at least two or three
anti-spyware programs. Then the most important part - read, understand, and
implement the following:

http://www.claymania.com/safe-hex.html

http://www.trendmicro.com/en/security/general/guide/overview/scgxp.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/spywareprevent.mspx

And most importantly never run any executable files optained via a P2P
network.

 

[Lee Antony]

I don't know of any way to do what you want. If you find a way it will not
solve your problem. You have to stop getting malware on your computer. That
is the problem you need to solve. Anti-malware software can help but the
most important part of the solution is changing your habits. You need an
active firewall, a resident anti-virus, and at least two or three
anti-spyware programs. Then the most important part - read, understand, and
implement the following:

http://www.claymania.com/safe-hex.html

http://www.trendmicro.com/en/security/general/guide/overview/scgxp.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/spywareprevent.mspx

And most importantly never run any executable files optained via a P2P
network.

A while ago I wondered about doing something similar to the OPs question. I
found:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314843/ but was not brave enough to try it.

 

[Bullwinkle Moose]

I have also attacked this problem. I use a combined solution. I run Acronis
and Ghost weekly and every couple of days I make a backup of my data using
Avantrix. This program backs up my data to a DVD. I do it every 2 or 3 days
except when I am using my computer heavily.

Regards,

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:38:46 -0700, "cfman" <[email protected]>

Long post, so this is 1 of 2 in a series!

I want to relocate this Document & Settings folder from C drive to D drive
permanently.

Generally, you can't do that.

Some Adware hijacked my computer and I had to reinstall windows XP.

That's a pretty DIRE reflection on XP maintainability, isn't it?

Everytime I forgot to make copies of some of my documents on the C drive
before I format C Drive.

I know I will need to reinstall Windows XP in the future(Windows
sucks. My years of using Windows is a long story of keeping reinstalling
Windows...).

Quite. But Windows doesn't such that badly (though it will if you
keep re-installing it); you'd do better to learn how to maintain the
same installation than "just" re-installing all the time. See...

http://cquirke.mvps.org/reinst.htm

I do agree that XP gives you nothing to help you reclaim your PC from
malware; in spite of obvious real-world mileage, the approach is still
"we will make the OS so secure you'll never be infected". Useless.

Do a Google for "Bart PE". An effective though demanding solution, at
least it's available - no thanks to MS. By 2006, I'd expect techs who
profess to be able to handle malware will be using Bart or some Linux
equivalent to approach active malware.

I don't want to make this mistake again. I want to relocate all
data/document/personal stuff to D drive, instead of the C drive.

Sure - it's what I do on every PC I build, but it goes a bit deeper
than moving the whole of "Documents and Settings" (D&S).

Not only may moving all of D&S be impossible, the contents of D&S are
so poorly arranged that one is obliged to re-organise them in order to
facilitate clean and effective backups. Problems:

1) D&S is itself a risk for malware activity

Specifically, it includes the StartUp groups for AllUsers and each
user account. Malware can drop intio these and thus start whenever
Windows starts, and so persist in active form when D&S is preserved in
toto. Less obviously, malware can add or replace shortcuts in Start
Menus and SendTo, to persist in that way.

This makes D&S dangerous to blindly restore after avoiding having to
deal with malware activity by "just" destroying the installation. It
also makes it dangerous to write-share D&S on the network, as anything
infecting other PCs on the network can drop into yours in active form.

When "the Internet" is treated as "just a big network", the
implications are obvious, dwarfed only by the stupidity of
full-sharing all HD volumes with known "hidden" share names anyway.

2) D&S is a risk for malware entry and persistence

By duhfault, IE dumps incoming downloads in "My Documents", and both
MS and MSN Messenger dumps "My Received Files" in there as well. More
annoyingly, you can't control this behavior in MSN Messenger until
someone has logged on and started using it (thus being at risk).

So not only does D&S contain workspaces most likely to act as malware
points of entry (Temp, Temporary Internet Files, desktops), even a
narrower backup of "My Documents" is likely to be polluted.

3) D&S and "My Documents" is bloated with huge material

D&S contains a separate "Temporary Internet Files" for each user
account, and by duhfault these are bloated to massive sixze. Who
needs 1G of old web pages? Everyone, according to the IE team.

The "My Pictures", "My Music" and "My Videos" subtrees are nested
within "My Documents", so even a single "My Documents" subtree can
become too massive to drag onto a CDR or DVDR for easy backup.

4) XP's "CD Burning" is within D&S

Remember, we're dealing with a maintenance skill set so poor that the
plan is to "just" destory the installation rather than confront active
malware. The obvious way to attempt this is to simply drag the whole
of D&S onto a CDR or DVDR, and let XP's native burning support do the
rest. This will fail because XP creates a copy of everything to be
written in a "CD Burning" location, and that location itself cannot be
handled in that way. Andf yes; that location is within D&S.

5) Many apps will not re-use data without "special treatment"

The applications most likely to be used by default, include Outlook
Express, Outlook, Windows Address Book, etc. These tend to break all
the rules of data survivability:
- data version bound to application version
- application version bound to a larger bundle (Windows, MS Office)
- atomic data sets that cannot be merged with existing data
- deeply-buried paths requiring more work during data recovery
- reliance on intra-application "import" and "export"
- fragile internal data structure that crashes app when broken

Simply banging new datasets in place not only destroys (rather than
merges into) whatever was there before, but may not be accepted by the
application as valid or current data anyway.

6) Malware is hidden within mail stores

You may amend the "just destroy and rebuild the installation, then
restore data" to "just destroy and rebuild the installation, then
restore data, but scan the data set before use" in order to reduce the
inevitability of your brand-new, un-patched installation from falling
prey to malware within a few hours or days.

But these scans can't penetrate the maliboxes to detect malware hidden
inside. Such malware remains a clickable risk, or (if it exploits the
IE HTML renderer or other exposed surface code defects) a risk that
can run the malware without any clicks.

The way around this is to choose a non-default email app that does not
hide incoming attachments within mailboxes but creates them as loose
scannable files, and that can be set not to use Microsoft's code to
process HTML "message text". Eudora's one such program:

http://cquirke.mvps.org/9x/eudwhy.htm


OK... you get the message: For what you're trying to do, simply
dumping all of D&S off C: isn't going to do it. See next post

------------ ----- --- -- - - - -

Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n)

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:38:46 -0700, "cfman" <[email protected]>

Long post, so part 2 of 2

I want to relocate this Document & Settings folder from C drive to D drive
permanently. I want to relocate all data/document/personal to D drive

However I've noticed that folders such as "LocalSettings/Temp/*.*" tend to
have virus/adware/spyware etc.

Yep - you already know why moving all of D&S isn't the ticket

OK, this will go through the whole thing from before you install
Windows in the first place...

1) Decide what partitioning you want

You don't need two physical hard drives to separate the core software
installation from data and other content. You can partition a single
hard drive so that it appears to be multiple drives. Typically, you'd
create a porimary C: for the installation and an extended partition
containing logical drives for everything else.

I'l use the word "volume" from now on, to refer to partitions or
logical drives that can be accessed by a drive letter. Each volume
can use one of three file systems:

a) NTFS
- no data recovery or interactive repair tools
- no access from DOS, DOS mode or Win9x
- only choice if files are over 2G and 4G in size
- only choice if you want file-level user security
- efficient for small files
- efficient for large numbers of files per directory
- paging-efficient 4k clusters even if > 8G

b) FAT32
- good data recovery and interactive repair tools
- access from DOS mode and Win9x if < 137G
- no support for files over 4G (some contexts, 2G)
- XP can't create volumes over 32G (use other tools)
- paging-efficient 4k clusters only if < 8G

c) FAT16
- better data recovery and interactive repair tools
- access from DOS, DOS mode and Win9x if < 137G
- maximum volume size 2G (4G if only for NT OSs)
- tiny file system structures, but larger cluster sizes

See http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm

If data recovery is more important to you than being able to block
data access from other users, I'd avoid NTFS for data volumes. In
fact, because there's not even an interactive repair tool for NTFS, I
currently avoid NTFS altogether, and use a FAT32 C: just under 8G
(8174M) so that I have paging-friendly 4k clusters.

Plan what you will put where. For example, by keeping all core code
off volumes other than C:, I can disable System Restore on all volumes
other than C: - thus reducing head travel and overhead.

Plan your partitioning for speed. The further "away" the volume, the
slower the access may be if most activity is at the start of the drive
in C:. I keep C: small, so that no matter how fragmented it is, the
heads never have to travel very far, and the next volume is not too
far away. Next, I use a 2G FAT16 (!) logical D: for data, for ease of
data recovery; only small user data files go here. Then there's a
huge E: that starts pretty "close" to C: and goes on for most of the
drive, and then a small F: at the end for seldom-used crucials.

Plan for survivability and ease of maintenance. You're likely to
suffer crashes and bad exits, and that means having to wait while XP
auto-fixes/botches the file system on startup. If that's one huge C:,
you will wait for ever or you'll bad-exit (again) so you can Esc the
brief "I'm going to tie up the system for hours" prompt. If C: is
small, it will take a time short enough to live with, plus whatever
gets messed up won't mess up your data.

I apply the following to volumes C: to F:...
- C: core code and temp, small SR, allow AutoChk
- D: small user data, disable SR, disable AutoChk
- E: everything else, disable SR, disable AutoChk
- D: cold storage and backups, disable SR, disable AutoChk

If you want FAT32 volumes over 32G, you have to use better tools than
what XP provides. I use BING from www.bootitng.com without installing
this as a boot manager, i.e. cancel install and do "partition work".
Due to bugs, the best DOS mode FDisk is limited to capacities < 100G,
while the standard FDisk from Win98SE and earlier fails around 50G.

2) Install your OS(s)

If you want to dual-boot to the DOS mode part of a Win9x, you can, as
long as you do not use that DOS mode over the 137G barrier. With the
partitioning I use, I use DOS mode's Scandisk to maintain C: and D:,
preferring it to ChkDsk/AutoChk because it allows interactive control.

To do this, you would first "install" the DOS mode to C:, e.g. by
booting the relevant DOS mode diskette and using Sys C:

I'd use the DOS mode from Win98SE, as it supports FAT32 and has an
effective EBD (Emergency Boot Disk). Anything older than Win95SR2
will not work with FAT32 and should be avoided.

Once your DOS mode is in place, you can install Windows XP and it will
preserve your previous OS as a bootable alternative. See also:

http://cquirke.mvps.org/multplan.htm

http://cquirke.mvps.org/multboot.htm

http://cquirke.mvps.org/multos.htm

Do not create multiple user accounts (more on that later)

NB: Do not do anything else after installing XP until (3) onwards!!

3) Set up your shell locations

Often (but not always) you can get Windows to track path changes by
right-dragging things around (rather than the usual Copy, Cut and
Paste) and then renaming them. The trick is to do this early, before
secondary path references have been derived from initial values!

First, we will de-bulk and them move "My Documents"
- start two instances on Windows Explorer and tile them
- navigate destination window into E:
- navigate source into D&S, user account, My Documents
- rt-drag "My Music" to E:, then rename "MUSIC"
- rt-drag "My Pictures" to E:, then rename "PICTURES"
- start Movie Maker, then exit it
- rt-drag "My Videos" to E:, then rename "VIDEOS"
- go up a level in your source window
- rt-drag "My Documents" to D:, then rename "DOCS"
- rt-click "My Documents" on desktop, Properties; set to D:\DOCS

Next, we will create and populate an E:\SUSPECT subtree for incoming
material, workspaces, and other high-risk things:
- navigate destination window to E:, create and enter SUSPECT folder
- navigate source window to Local Settings, App Data, Microsoft
- rt-drag "CD Burning" to E:\SUSPECT
- navigate to base of user account
- rt-drag "desktop" to E:\SUSPECT
- navigate to base of "AllUsers" user account
- rename "desktop" to "alldesk"
- rt-drag "alldesk" to E:\SUSPECT
- create new folder OEMAIL in E:\SUSPECT
- create new folder IMESS in E:\SUSPECT
- run OE; Tools, Options, Maint.., set mail store E:\SUSPECT\OEMAIL
- exit and run OE again, OK
- run MS Messenger; Tools, Options, Pref..; set E:\SUSPECT\IMESS
- delete "My Received Files" from D:\DOCS
- run IE; Tools, Options; set IE cache to 20M (don't relocate)

I don't use MS address book or Outlook, so if you want to do battle
with those data locations, insert your attempts here. I just walk
away from the whole mess and use Eudora instead...
- create location E:\SUSPECT\ATTACH
- install Eudora, choose Custom
- set data location as D:\DOCS\E-MAIL (it will create it)
- run Eudora; Tools, Options, Attachments; set E:\SUSPECT\ATTACH
- so safe mail can back up with DOCS, but risky attachments exluded

Finally, restart Windows and do some clean-up (be careful here!):
- run Regedit
- search for "\My "
- if reference is incorrect, change to point to new location
- the main one is setting IE to dump in E:\SUSPECT not D:\DOCS

Many 3rd-party apps will derive their paths from the shell paths you
fixed earlier - that's why it's best to do those changes first. You
can also apply these settings directly through their options, e.g. get
WinZip to use E:\SUSPECT\UNZIPPED not C:\UNZIPPED, Firefox to download
to E:\SUSPECT instead of Desktop, Winamp to rip music to E:\MUSIC
instead of "C:\My Music", etc. Fortunately, even if apps (or users)
do dump on the desktop, that's not in C: anymore, so no bloat.

I keep Temp and "Temporary Internet Files" for speed, though I trim
the size of "Temporary Internet Files"

4) Installing large apps and games

It's crucial to stop junk dumping in C: if you keep C: as small as I
do (i.e. as a 7.99G FAT32). All apps should be installed as "custom",
so that the installation path can be controlled. I install MS Office
and core deeply-integrated apps such as av and CD writing on C: for
speed, but all games, multimedia titles etc. go on E:

5) Debulking C: as Windows Updates pile up

Freshly-installed XP is highly exploitable, especially if pre-SP2. As
you apply Service Packs, patches and updates, the Windows subtree gets
bloated with old code files and so on - eventually, for every one
active file, the heads hgave to step over 3 to 4 "dead" ones.

Once again, you'd open and tile two Windows Explorers...
- navigate source to Windows base directory
- navigate destination to E:
- create and enter E:\XPSTORE
- rt-drag all (hidden) $NT... subtres to E:\XPSTORE
- rt-drag "ServicePackFiles" to E:\XPSTORE
- repeat the above after every update binge
- defrag now to consolidate free space
- defrag a week later to optimize renewed code

The above assumes you've set Windows Explorer to show all files, etc.

6) Multiple user accounts

Short answer: Don't.

Long answer: If you want to use multiple user accounts, then good luck
in figuring out how to set up the "default" account template so that
intelligent choices are used for shell folder locations and IE's web
cache size. By duuuuhfault it will be the same "all deeply-nested in
C:, and lumped together in My Documents" and "huuuge web cache".

Or you can run after these settings every time someone creates a new
user account so that Johnny can have a different wallpaper to Jenny.

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Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n)

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

I need not only relocating "My Documents", but also the whole "Documents &
Settings", except those "temp" folders. What shall I do? Please advise.

Previous posts cover that.

Apps that are hard-wired to dump in "Application Data" (or "Local
Settings\Application Data") I simply avoid.

Once you don't need "Application Data", and have moved Desktop and the
various "My..." ghettos out of D&S, the rest of D&S is disposable.

Two problems with these imaging software:

Only two? ;-)

1. They will lose my changes between last imaging date and today the damage
date. Esp. when "Documents & Settings" are on C drive, if I made an image of
the C drive 10 days ago, and my PC got screwed today and then I restore
using the image, my changes to all the documents & settings will be lost for
the past 10 days.

Yep. This is the "backup problem":
- keep all wanted material and changes
- lose all unwanted changes

How do you scope between "wanted" and "unwanted"?

A "full system backup" ASSumes you can do so on the basis of time,
i.e. the backup is made before the unwanted changes took effect, and
you don't care about losing any wanted changes made after that time.

A partition image backup is the only way to preserve an XP
installation, because XP is too fragile to survive a file-level backup
and restore (even if you preserve *every* file).

But a partition image has to be restored in total, destroying
everything that was there before. You can't browse and choose the
bits you want to leave out, or selectively restore, and you can't have
it not destroy everything where it is restored.

An answer suggests itself:
- keep only the OS and core code in C:
- use SR to maintain a "system undo" on C:
- keep all data off C:
- keep SR disabled on all volumes other than C:

Even if you do seek to preserve your installation via image backup,
you are still relying on the great universal X-axis (time) to separate
the state you wish to retain/restore from what you want to loose.

This has always been doomed because viruses were generally written to
hide in dormant form (thus permeating all "full system backups") until
the payload trigger or date rolled around.

It's doomed for another reason now; your code base is no longer a
known-good boilerplate state, but is subject to barrage of real-time
updates to avoid malware exploiting its way into the system. Couple
that with a "network client" OS permanently connected to the 'net via
broadband, and you can join the dots from there.

Is "doomed" too harsh a word? Yes, in that it may be useful to have
an image backup to hand in various situations. No, if you are
speaking about "just restore your backup" as a generic fix that avoids
having to detect and manage active malware.

This is the fundamental problem with "Document & Settings" residing on C
drive. Very problemetic.

Yep - but fixable, at least it for the shell folders (though multiple
and new user accounts increase the hassle). To go through as much
hassle for a single app that's hardwired to use some deeply-nested
"Application Data" location may be a waste of time, compared to
dumping that application and using something more clueful.

2. To solve the problem 1, you have to make imaging more frequently. Say
once every 3 days.

See above - really, as a way of "never" having to detect and manage
malware, it's prolly less reliable than "in av we trust".

Then the problem is that most AntiVirus and AntiMalware
softwares are not effective.

They have NEVER been a substitute for "safe hex" clue, just as "just
make backups" is not a substitute for maintenance clue.

PC-on-Internet is more difficult than advertised.
Live with it

Thus if the frequency of making C drive images is once every 3 days, it may
be well possible that you also make images including the virus/mal-ware.
Then when you restore, you inevitably restored the virus/mal-ware/trojan

Yep - can be the case even with a month-old backup, and who wants to
lose a month's worth of updates and installations, let alone data?

No, a better approach is to:
- scope out incoming trash, infectable code, and integration points
- scope in clean data

Previous posts refer as a "how-to"

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Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n)