Win7 User and Folder names?

[NeilF]

Current pc had a hard drive failure, so the drive was replaced and I've reinstalled Win7, and brought back (drag & drop) the backed up files from the J drive to the C drive.

When I created the new User Account names during the installation of Win7 - for example, "Neil" - I saw in the Windows Explorer view that under Users there are two user folders - "Neil" and "Neil.Home_pc".

Question: why does Windows create two user folders?

It's the same for the each of the other family members with User Accounts e.g. "Wifey" and "Wifey.Home_pc".

My situation is exacerbated by the fact that when I brought back (dragged & dropped) the backed up files into the User folder I brought back "Neil.Home_Office" ("Home_Office" was the name previously given to the computer before the hard disk crashed) - so now I actually have in the User view "Neil", "Neil.Home_pc", "Neil.Home_Office";
"Wifey", "Wifey.Home_pc" and "Wifey.Home_Office" etc.

Naturally I had fiddled about and tried to consolidate into just "Neil" by copying files into Neil then deleting "Neil.Home_pc" but that seems to have fecked up the registry links or whatever.


Can anyone explain why the multiple user folders?

And how do I un-feck the damage? (System Restore - but that doesn't change file names, etc, does it?) Oh dear.



Cheers,

Neil.

 

[shugie]

Current pc had a hard drive failure, so the drive was replaced and I've reinstalled Win7, and brought back (drag & drop) the backed up files from the J drive to the C drive.

When I created the new User Account names during the installation of Win7 - for example, "Neil" - I saw in the Windows Explorer view that under Users there are two user folders - "Neil" and "Neil.Home_pc".

Question: why does Windows create two user folders?

It's the same for the each of the other family members with User Accounts e.g. "Wifey" and "Wifey.Home_pc".

My situation is exacerbated by the fact that when I brought back (dragged & dropped) the backed up files into the User folder I brought back "Neil.Home_Office" ("Home_Office" was the name previously given to the computer before the hard disk crashed) - so now I actually have in the User view "Neil", "Neil.Home_pc", "Neil.Home_Office";
"Wifey", "Wifey.Home_pc" and "Wifey.Home_Office" etc.

Naturally I had fiddled about and tried to consolidate into just "Neil" by copying files into Neil then deleting "Neil.Home_pc" but that seems to have fecked up the registry links or whatever.


Can anyone explain why the multiple user folders?

And how do I un-feck the damage? (System Restore - but that doesn't change file names, etc, does it?) Oh dear.



Cheers,

Neil.

The second set of folders, with the name 'home' or 'home_office' are made by windows for matters related to networking I believe.

What now happens that shouldn't that makes you think damage has occured? System Restore might take you back to the point before it happened.

What were you trying to achieve copying folders and files?

 

[NeilF]

What were you trying to achieve copying folders and files?

Just consolidating & tidying up three folder sets per user down to one.

Having done that for "daughter" (removed "daughter.home_office" and "daughter.home_pc" cos I wasn't going to feck with mine or wifey's straight away) when I try to logon / open her User Account it "prepares your new desktop" and then creates a temporary profile for the user; no usual desktop is loaded.


Cheers,

Neil.

 

[shugie]

I was wondering why you did the original drag and drop, were you trying to get user data back?

 

[NeilF]

I was wondering why you did the original drag and drop, were you trying to get user data back?

The original hard drive failed - the whole computer went back (to Costco) who replaced the failed C drive with a new one - but I then had to reinstal Win7 and Office 2010, MapSource, Webroot, etc etc because it was a virgin new disk drive.

Fortunately I have an external Seagate drive dedicated to being a backup drive (I use BounceBack) which had all the files on it although I couldn't use Bounceback to 'restore' the files because it had to be installed as new on the new C drive and then wouldn't recognise the data sets on the J drive ("I didn't create them so I'm not touching them - but I will reformat the J drive for you to do a full system backup!")

So, drag & drop was the only way to bring back those backed up files to the new C drive.


Cheers,

Neil.

 

[NeilF]

It's all bolloxed. I'm going to do a full reinstallation of Win7, Office, etc etc and then darg the files and folders back to their respective locations while I am looged on as each user - not using my own administrator provileges to do it for them

Cheers,

Neil.

 

[shugie]

It's all bolloxed. I'm going to do a full reinstallation of Win7, Office, etc etc and then darg the files and folders back to their respective locations while I am looged on as each user - not using my own administrator provileges to do it for them

Cheers,

Neil.

I guess that all you really need to copy is the data though, which means you need to be careful, rather than just copy the whole folder over, move the files you actually need. When moving, if the operation produces a message about an already existing file, and offering to skip/replace/make renamed copy, there are going to be some data files for some applications which need to be overwritten, but also some that are best probably not over written.

Files with extensions recognisable from the application eg *.doc, ".xls should be easy to deal with. Usually in stuff in downloads and documents can be shifted easily.

Have a look at the user/appdata directory, that often has files applications use for their settings, copy it across but make renamed copies of the files that already exist, note the sub-directory, then start the application. If you see what you want fine, if not, rename the files so the moved one has the 'original' name and start the application again.

I'd suggest you only move known data files, and files specific to applications that don't seem to be working properly, rather than moving the whole user folder, which might be problematic.

 

[Clive]

Just consolidating & tidying up three folder sets per user down to one.

Having done that for "daughter" (removed "daughter.home_office" and "daughter.home_pc" cos I wasn't going to feck with mine or wifey's straight away) when I try to logon / open her User Account it "prepares your new desktop" and then creates a temporary profile for the user; no usual desktop is loaded.


Cheers,

Neil.

Temporary profiles can be fixed - see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215

Control Panel/System/Advanced/User profiles can give you some info also.

Has your machine ever been joined to a Domain?

 

[Clive]

It's all bolloxed. I'm going to do a full reinstallation of Win7, Office, etc etc and then darg the files and folders back to their respective locations while I am looged on as each user - not using my own administrator provileges to do it for them

Cheers,

Neil.

When trying to recreate profiles from a backup it is often easiest to create all the users first. Then log onto each one in turn so the basic set of profile folders are created (by the action of logging on) i.e. Document, Desktop, Downloads etc.

then use robocopy for each of the "Normal" folders created above.

 

[NeilF]

When trying to recreate profiles from a backup it is often easiest to create all the users first. Then log onto each one in turn so the basic set of profile folders are created (by the action of logging on) i.e. Document, Desktop, Downloads etc.

Seems it was exactly that, Clive.

Then I moved on to 'restoring' iTunes and all its settings . . . . .

I think I've got it sorted now . . . . . . so I shall close this thread.

Thnaks for your guidance, chaps.