moving Documents & Settings to D: Partition

[Charles W Davis]

One of our Club members bought an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC a few years
back with a 150GB hard drive (as advertised). Windows XP - all updates
applied.

However that hard drive was partitioned C: 62GB Recovery 12GB D: 75GB.

She is down to less than 1GB remaining on the C: partition. Nothing on the
D: partition. I would like to move the Documents and Settings folder to the
D: partition. In my opinion, that is how HP should have delivered the
computer.

All of the help searches return responses pertaining to Windows 2000 etc.

Any thing published for this situation, or any other help would be
appreciated.

 

[Gordon]

One of our Club members bought an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC a few
years back with a 150GB hard drive (as advertised). Windows XP - all
updates applied.

However that hard drive was partitioned C: 62GB Recovery 12GB D: 75GB.

She is down to less than 1GB remaining on the C: partition.

Eh? What is she storing there, the national archives?

Nothing on
the D: partition. I would like to move the Documents and Settings folder
to the D: partition. In my opinion, that is how HP should have delivered
the computer.

All of the help searches return responses pertaining to Windows 2000 etc.

Any thing published for this situation, or any other help would be
appreciated.

Just move the My Documents folder (I expect that's where all the files
are anyway). Right-click on My Documents, select "Move" and follow your
nose!

 

[Nepatsfan]

One of our Club members bought an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC a few years
back with a 150GB hard drive (as advertised). Windows XP - all updates
applied.

However that hard drive was partitioned C: 62GB Recovery 12GB D: 75GB.

She is down to less than 1GB remaining on the C: partition. Nothing on the D:
partition. I would like to move the Documents and Settings folder to the D:
partition. In my opinion, that is how HP should have delivered the computer.

All of the help searches return responses pertaining to Windows 2000 etc.

Any thing published for this situation, or any other help would be
appreciated.

Here's the pertinent article for Windows XP.

An error message informs you that you cannot move or rename the Documents and
Settings folder
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314843/

To me that looks like an awful lot of work when there are easier alternatives to
address this problem. First off, here are some steps you can take to free up
space on the C drive.

1. Relocate the My Documents folder to the D drive. Take a look at this article
for more info.

How to Change the Default Location of the My Documents Folder
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310147

2. Reduce the amount of hard drive space allocated to System Restore.

Go to Control Panel and double click the System icon.
Click on the System Restore tab.
Under Available drives, click on the C drive so it's highlighted.
Hit the Settings button.
Move the slider to the left so it reserves no more than a GB of HD space.

3. Reduce the amount of space allocated for Internet Explorer's
cache.

Go to Control Panel and double click Internet Options.
Hit the Settings button in the Browsing history section on the General page.
Note: Hit the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section of the
General page if using IE6.
Reduce the amount of disk space used to something between 50 and 100 MB.

4. Reduce the amount of space used by the Recycle bin.

Right click the Recycle bin icon on the Desktop and select Properties from the
menu.
Move the slider to the left. 5% should be more than enough.

5. Remove Windows Update uninstall files.

The files used to uninstall updates to Windows can be deleted
if you're confident that they will not have to be uninstalled
in the future. These files can be found in the Windows folder
with names similar to this $NtUninstallKB123456$. They are
hidden folders so make sure you enable viewing of hidden files
and folders in Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View tab.
Note: Do not delete the $hf_mig$ folder. This folder will be
used by future updates.

Here's a web site which provides an automated way of deleting
these folders.

Courtesy of Doug Knox, MS-MVP
Removes Hotfix Backup files and the Add/Remove Programs
Registry entries.
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm

6. Relocate the storage location for files used to store email. How this is done
depends on the program used.

Finally, resizing the partitions is an option. You can download a thirty day
trial version of this program to perform this task.

BootIT Next Generation
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm

Keep in mind that any important files should be backed up before making any
changes to the hard drive.

Good luck

Nepatsfan

 

[Charles W Davis]

Here's the pertinent article for Windows XP.

An error message informs you that you cannot move or rename the Documents
and Settings folder
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314843/

To me that looks like an awful lot of work when there are easier
alternatives to address this problem. First off, here are some steps you
can take to free up space on the C drive.

1. Relocate the My Documents folder to the D drive. Take a look at this
article
for more info.

How to Change the Default Location of the My Documents Folder
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310147

2. Reduce the amount of hard drive space allocated to System Restore.

Go to Control Panel and double click the System icon.
Click on the System Restore tab.
Under Available drives, click on the C drive so it's highlighted.
Hit the Settings button.
Move the slider to the left so it reserves no more than a GB of HD space.

3. Reduce the amount of space allocated for Internet Explorer's
cache.

Go to Control Panel and double click Internet Options.
Hit the Settings button in the Browsing history section on the General
page.
Note: Hit the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section of
the
General page if using IE6.
Reduce the amount of disk space used to something between 50 and 100 MB.

4. Reduce the amount of space used by the Recycle bin.

Right click the Recycle bin icon on the Desktop and select Properties from
the
menu.
Move the slider to the left. 5% should be more than enough.

5. Remove Windows Update uninstall files.

The files used to uninstall updates to Windows can be deleted
if you're confident that they will not have to be uninstalled
in the future. These files can be found in the Windows folder
with names similar to this $NtUninstallKB123456$. They are
hidden folders so make sure you enable viewing of hidden files
and folders in Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View tab.
Note: Do not delete the $hf_mig$ folder. This folder will be
used by future updates.

Here's a web site which provides an automated way of deleting
these folders.

Courtesy of Doug Knox, MS-MVP
Removes Hotfix Backup files and the Add/Remove Programs
Registry entries.
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm

6. Relocate the storage location for files used to store email. How this
is done depends on the program used.

Finally, resizing the partitions is an option. You can download a thirty
day trial version of this program to perform this task.

BootIT Next Generation
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm

Keep in mind that any important files should be backed up before making
any changes to the hard drive.

Good luck

Nepatsfan

Nepatsfan,

First, I'll read the documentation, choose a course of action and then set
right to it. Thank You.

 

[Gerry]

Charles

How to Change the Default Location of the My Documents Folder:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310147

You may also need to change Default File locations in the Microsoft
Office programmes you choose to move the My Documents folder. For Word
go to Tools, Options, File Locations, highlight Documents, click on
Modify and change file path. For Excel go to Tools, Options, General
and change default file path.

My Documents is one of a number of system created Special Folders
including My Pictures and My Music. These can more easily be relocated
using Tweak Ui. Download TweakUI, one of the MS powertoys, from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

In TweakUi select My Computer, Special Folders. You can scroll down to
see the full list of Special Folders to the left of the Change
Location button.

You can move programmes but to do this you have to uninstall and
reinstall.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~