- Create a new user with administrator permissions
- Sign out of the current user and sign in as the newly created user
- Navigate to
C:\Users
in File Explorer - Click into the account you want move AppData from
- There could be a popup telling you that you need to allow yourself to access that user's data, do so
- Cut the AppData folder
- If invisible, go to View and check Hidden Items
- Paste in the desired location
- Some errors will show up:
- exe's with size of 0 will pop up errors 0x80070780 "This file cannot be accessed", skip them
- tbres' and other various files will pop up saying they shouldn't be moved and are you sure, always yes
- Some errors will show up:
- Wait for the operation to finish
- Navigate back to the AppData location before the move
- Delete the old folder
- It contains those exe's that couldn't be accessed, they can be deleted though
- Launch Command Prompt as admin
- I recommend
ctrl+R
, typingcmd
andctrl+shift+enter
- I recommend
- Navigate to the User folder of the moved account
cd ..\..\Users\Account_name_here
- Create a junction named AppData to the moved folder location
mklink /j AppData "Z:\Path\To\New\AppData"
- Log out of the new user, log back in as the user with the moved AppData
- Start menu will not work, throw an error and ask you to sign out to fix it, that won't work, ignore it
- Start powershell as admin
- Same method as with cmd
- Fix the UWP packages
Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
- This will fix the start menu by adding back the applications you "deleted" in step 10
- Some packages may fail because a newer version is already installed, that's not a problem
- Some may fail because on the new user the packageds cannot be installed while they're running (notable: StartMenuExperienceHost), kill them:
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
taskkill /F /IM SearchApp.exe
taskkill /F /IM SearchUI.exe
taskkill /F /IM ShellExperienceHost.exe
taskkill /F /IM StartMenuExperiencehost.exe
- Sign out, restart, sign back back in
- Delete the user created in step 1
- Some packages may still be broken, you may fix them as needed
Get-AppXPackage *WindowsStore* -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
- Replace the WindowsStore with name of various UWP apps that break
So, I've followed the procedure, but I still have various issues which are driving me insane.
Please note that I couldn't move all the folders from AppData, no matter how hard I tried (some weird error with IE5). Of course I was running as administrator, etc... I've kept those files on an AppDataOLD in C:. While the rest of AppData is now in E:.
I haven't tried all my apps and programs that I've installed, which are A LOT.
But, some Windows functionality are compromised:
1- Nothing happens if I click the right-mouse button on the task bar, so I cannot pin apps, close them with right click, etc.
2- The Search bar in Explorer doesn't work, neither it does from the Start menu, so it's hard for me to launch CMD and similar (I can do it only from Task Manager).
3- Snippet and other small Windows tools aren't working.
Running the Get-Add-AppxPackage I get this error:
"Cannot find path 'C:\AppXManifest.xml' because it does not exist."
However, it seems to run, I get a lot of "Depolyment" errors, even though some seems to work.
Now, I cannot do a hard reset of Windows, because I truly have tons of stuff in C (software and whatnot), and I'm running out of time for a job (I've actually moved the AppData because I truly needed some space in C:), but I cannot waste more time...
Any ideas on how to solve the problems above? Or any third party tool to do the job?
Anything, please!