Dave said:
When I copy my 'Documents and Settings" folder, then try to paste it to a
removable HD, I get the error message "Cannot copy NTUSER: It is being
used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using
the file and try again."
That's to be expected.
I am the only user, and there are no other open programs open.
Oh yes there are, you just don't see them.
Well, that's pretty much not the way to do that task. And as you see, the
first reason is that some files that are in use won't be copied, and the
copy utility will simply fail, leaving you to figure out how much was and
was not copied, and whether what was copied is any good.
A method I can strongly recommend for raw copying is the use of Fileware's
FileSync, an excellent shareware utility.
http://www.fileware.com/
http://www.fileware.com/download.htm
You point this to the two folders you want to make the same, and click
compare. Once done, click Synchronize, choose which direction to copy files
and folders, and let it go.
It's pretty quick and has the wonderful characteristic of not just giving up
and going away as the Windows tools do. It simply makes a note of the
files it can't copy, and moves on to the next file. At the end, you get
the list of the files that couldn't be copied.
Then you can do binary compares of the two folder structures to ensure that
they are exactly the same. There can be time-stamp differences, these are
inconsequential.
Now, this comes to the second question of whether you actually want to copy
all the files in the documents and settings structure, and the third
question, will you have the rights to do this.
This folder structure also contains folders for cookies, temporary files,
browser caches... there can be over a gigabyte of junk that isn't needed.
So, either figure out what files you *do* need, or run something like
ccleaner first to get rid of the stuff you don't need.
And finally, if there are other accounts (not all are user accounts, but
there should be at least one other user account - the Administrator), they
are also under Documents and Settings, and your account may not have rights
to copy their files - and you often don't need them. And that will cause
the process to fail.
If you're trying to make some sort of backup of the system, you'll need to
give it some more thought and planning, and examine the tools more closely.
HTH
-pk
