Copying A User Profile To Another Profile

[reddwarf4ever]

Believe I have a corrupt user profile as newly installed apps not appearing in desktop programs menu, so decided to create two new profiles one final and one temporary, using the copy to procedure built into Windows, but used Windows enable app to allow copy to to work.....got an error message at the last step with a pop up windo telling Windows could not delete the folder.....need some help please.

 

[Trouble]

The procedure is explained pretty well here
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-corrupted-user-profile#1TC=windows-7
It's the same for 10 as it was back in 7
The main caveat being is that you cannot be logged in as the user your are copy to or from, so a third user is needed.
It is generally a good idea to make sure that all three users or members of the local administrator's group and not a "standard" user. You can change that before and after the process, it seems to make things easier and prevents some things from not working properly after the copy is complete.

 

[zephyrus]

The procedure is explained pretty well here
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-corrupted-user-profile#1TC=windows-7
It's the same for 10 as it was back in 7
The main caveat being is that you cannot be logged in as the user your are copy to or from, so a third user is needed.
It is generally a good idea to make sure that all three users or members of the local administrator's group and not a "standard" user. You can change that before and after the process, it seems to make things easier and prevents some things from not working properly after the copy is complete.

The link seems irrelevant since it refers to files and folders that don't exist in Win 10, especially the ntuser files which don't seem to exist. Anyone know of a better procedure?

 

[Trouble]

Not exactly sure what you mean by

refers to files and folders that don't exist in Win 10

ntuser files are still present, as they were in Windows 7 and prior, if anything, there may be more of them and likewise they are typically "protected operating system files".
Most folks interested in recovering a profile folder are interested in the contents of ....
Contacts
Desktop
Documents
Favorites
Links
Music
OneDrive
Pictures
Videos, etc., etc.
And perhaps the AppData folder (Hidden)
Normally I suggest that people recover what they are truly interested in and leave anything labeled ntuser or NTUSER as those files may be accountable for the profile corruption in the first place.
OF course, depending on the circumstances there may be other means and methods of recovering from a corrupt user profile. IF there is a specific error message then perhaps searching for that might prove more beneficial.

 

[Chris Bedford]

The procedure is explained pretty well here
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-corrupted-user-profile#1TC=windows-7
It's the same for 10 as it was back in 7

Ermmm... actually that explanation is comprehensively incomplete, covering only "My Documents" and ignoring Music, photos, favourites etc (OK, easy to work out yourself), not to mention profile settings and bookmarks for such applications as Firefox (harder, and different for each app); also there is a pointless step where it tells you (step 2) to open "My Documents" and then navigate (step 6) to the Documents folder of another user. At best this is confusing.

Also there is no mention of how to deal with the permissions issue: when you attempt to open another user's home folder, Windows (very properly) gets in your way and makes you apply Admin privileges to gain access to it. Once you have gone through that (potentially lengthy, depending on the total number of files) process, writing those files to the *third* user's home folders poses another, related, series of challenges.

A better (in my inflated opinion) method would be to log in as User1 (the profile you want to copy *from*) and copy all the contents of the profile to a staging area - an external disk would probably be best - then log on as User2 (The *to* profile) and copy back. Essentially a backup and restore, which automatically bypasses permissions issues and makes sure to get everything possible. In fact I just use SyncBack, a freeware file backup program to do this with minimal mess and fuss. Takes quite a while, but in the long run I find it's faster than the "official" Microsoft offered procedure.

 

[Chris Bedford]

In fact I just use SyncBack, a freeware file backup program to do this with minimal mess and fuss. Takes quite a while, but in the long run I find it's faster than the "official" Microsoft offered procedure.

P.S. Windows XP had an *incredibly* simple way to do this whole thing in one step. But then, XP wasn't big on separating user permissions on one computer. *sigh* the price we pay for security...

 

[Anita Saylor]

Copying a profile from same to same versions of Windows does work. But if the OS and version of Office are different, its a recipe for disaster. Better to consider a quality product like LapLink for personal use, or an IT-oriented solution like Migration Manager from Tranxition for "interversion" migrations. Why? Because your machine will actually work when you are done.