I don't know how many of you actually use a System partition and a Data Partition where your information is kept seperate from your data files, but I like to keep them seperated for the very reason I am bringing this up.

Space......I allocate about 20 gigs for the OS and M$ related installs. It is usually more than enough, unless, like I did this time around, I forget to move my user file.

Was in the process of installing a couple of games that require quite a bit of space in my user folder on the C: drive and realized that I was running out of space.

OOPS!

So, what do you do? You move them and create a link to them using a DOS prompt.

Here's how:

Log out of your normal account and log into the Admin account.

For people who bought their PC with Windows preinstalled, simply hit ctrl-alt-del twice from the login screen and you should get a good old fashioned windows login prompt. Simply change the username to Administrator and IF you have a password, enter it or if you don't, just hit enter.

Some of you may already have the Admin account on your login screen, if so then you are good to go!

For the rest of us who chose to build our own systems, you will need to activate the admin account.

From your account, open CMD with Admin privs and type in the following:
net user administrator /active:yes

This will make the Admin account appear on your login screen. If you want to disable it afterwards, simply change the yes to no and your set!

Once you get into the Admin account, go to the Users folder - C:\Users
Right click, CUT your user file (you could move them all, but since you are in the Admin account, it's prolly a good idea just move yours). Then simply paste it wherever you want to move it.

You will most likely come across a few files that will not move. Here is where you can get tricky with it.

You can try the following from the admin account, but MAY need to reboot into safe mode to get it to work, if you do, just follow the same steps.

From your CMD prompt, type -
move C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Apple\Apple Software Update*.* D:\Username\AppData\Local\Apple\Apple Software Update

Yes, you will need to type in the entire thing.

IF that does not work, and IF the files giving you fits is a TEMP file, from your command prompt type the following - Again, you may try this from the admin account, but if it does not work, be prepared to reboot into safe mode - (WARNING - DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK! temp files can be deleted 98% of the time, but if it happens to be a temp files that falls into the rarely needed 2% you could mess something up - BE SURE FIRST!)
del C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Apple\Apple Software Update\useless.tmp - you will have to type in the entire location and file name. After hittin enter, the file should be gone.

If you, like me, have more than one file that needs to go, try this command instead - del C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Apple\Apple Software Update\*.*

The *.* tells DOS to delete EVERYTHING in that folder without prejudice. I was in safe mode when I did it, but it worked.

After you have everything moved to the new location - DELETE your old user file. You will not be able to perform the next step without doing this first as it will cause an error "Cannot create a folder/file that already exists".

Ok - now that you have your folder and it's contents moved/or deleted, you can create a symbolic link from the new location to the old.

This step should be performed from the admin account BEFORE trying to log back into your old account. Otherwise you will either get an error, or Windows will create a new user folder for you on the C: drive!

Type in the follwing and ONLY change the location and drive letter! I will put mine here so that you can see what I mean.

mklink /D C:\Users\Morpheus P:\Morpheus

The /D is a switch used by mklink so that it knows what you want it to do - then, you type in the original location and the new location. I did not create another Users files since the only one I ever use is mine (kids nor wife use my pc). So I just dumped my folder into the P: drive.

After you've done this, you should notice that the C: drive is alot lighter than it used to be. Mine was hogging up over 7gigs of space!

Future issues -
System Restor - Using system restore will make dupes of everything, So you might want to make a system restore point after performing these steps, will make things easier for you.

System reinstall - all you have to do is start up with your new account (name it the same for ease) then switch over to the admin account and do the aforementioned steps and your stuff will be right where it always was!

Hope this helps someone!

This does cause some issues as it looks like your data maybe in two locations. Some applications may show your data in two locations. I set my computer up like this from Day 1. This is the one thing I do not like about Win 7.

That is true, but it's because it mirrors it on the C: drive - it really isn't there if you go and look. Just a glitch, I suppose.