Documents & Settings on other partition, C:\ still gets filled, whatabout roaming?

[Andreas M.]

Hello,

this is WinXP Pro/SP2.

I have my "Documents and Settings" on a separate partition. I have
configured this with the aid of TweakUI and, if memory serves me
correctly, by other means. I work with this setup since a few years
without any problems. One thing, however, slipped through my control,
and that is the home-directory, as set somehwere in the system's
configuration. I guess it must have been a registry-entry. Whatever...

The problem is, that most if not all of my "Documents and Settings" get
mirrored on "C:\Documents and Settings". It also may have to do with the
roaming, that I once tested via an SMB share. So, what happens is, that
my system-partition always gets filled up with my user-directory, where
the reason for the seperate partition was to circumvent exactly this.

Does this sound familiare? Did anyone experience this? How exactly does
the path handling function in the user-profile roaming (ie:
user-directory on network share)? I have no network share in work right
now, but since we are here, that would be something, that may come into
interest in the next weeks. Will Windows keep something locally?

Thanks.

 

[Iceman]

Hello,

this is WinXP Pro/SP2.

I have my "Documents and Settings" on a separate partition. I have
configured this with the aid of TweakUI and, if memory serves me
correctly, by other means. I work with this setup since a few years
without any problems. One thing, however, slipped through my control,
and that is the home-directory, as set somehwere in the system's
configuration. I guess it must have been a registry-entry. Whatever...

The problem is, that most if not all of my "Documents and Settings" get
mirrored on "C:\Documents and Settings". It also may have to do with the
roaming, that I once tested via an SMB share. So, what happens is, that
my system-partition always gets filled up with my user-directory, where
the reason for the seperate partition was to circumvent exactly this.

Does this sound familiare? Did anyone experience this? How exactly does
the path handling function in the user-profile roaming (ie:
user-directory on network share)? I have no network share in work right
now, but since we are here, that would be something, that may come into
interest in the next weeks. Will Windows keep something locally?

Thanks.

Try right-clicking the Documents and Settings folder on the C:\ drive and
under 'Properties' select Attributes > Hidden.

See also:

"How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421&Product=winxp

Maybe not the perfect solution, but it might help a little.

 

[Andreas M.]

On 31.05.2008 19:37 Iceman wrote

Try right-clicking the Documents and Settings folder on the C:\ drive and
under 'Properties' select Attributes > Hidden.

Thanks, but that is not a good solution, because Firefox is, while
writing all its profile-data to my desired location, writing the cache
to the profile dir it created in "C:\Documents and
Settings\user\Application Data\Local Settings\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\etc."

It is interesting to note, that my application settings are being
mirrored (and paritally being written only to) the "Local
Settings\Application Data\" on C:\Documents and Settings, while I most
of this content is on F:\user\Application Data\. F:\Local
Settings\Application Data however is nearly empty.

 

[Andreas M.]

I may have been a bit unclear. I will try to line out the problem a bit
more.

The background is, that I have "Program Files", %TEMP%, pagefile and
hibernation file, as well as "Documents and Settings" on other
partitions than C:\

TweakUI allows to set these (under "My Computer/Special Folders"). One
can configure folders for "CD Burning", Desktop, Document Templates,
Installation Path, Favorites, My Documents, Shared Documents, Startmenu
and so on. With another tweak util or some editing in the registry (I do
not remember, it was a few years ago, that I did this), one can set the
complete root for the "Documents and Settings" to another place. This I did.

However, somewhere is another mention of the path. An example for that
would be, that

C:\> echo %USERPROFILE%

results in
C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm

though, I have configured it to be
F:\andreasm

everywhere else.

"Local Settings" on F:\ is nearly empty, instead "Application Data" is
to be found within F:\andreasm\Application Data and not
F:\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data (which exists, but is nearly
emtpy).

Now some programs evaluate %USERPROFILE%. What is even more wired is,
that they write to both:

F:\andreasm\Application Data

and
C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data\

while "C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Application Data" is nearly
unused. Some programs only write some special stuff to

C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data\

for example, Firefox writes all the the profile directory at
F:\andreasm\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xyz.Default\

except its cache, which it writes to the profile on C:\ within
"C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xyz.Default\"

Phew. ;-)

So, my questions are:

Why the difference of
C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data

and
F:\andreasm\Application Data

(nb: F:\andreasm is equivalent to Documents and Settings\andreasm\)

and why does some software use both directories, while writing parts to
one, parts to the other and why is, in addition, my complete
F:\Documents and Settings\andreasm

being mirrored in
C:\Documents and Settings\andreasm\Local Settings\Application Data

Thanks.