The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Windows XP max profile size?

Windows XP max profile size?

So I haven't used Windows in a while, and I've found myself with a new system with Windows XP. It's a pretty good OS, I admit it. But I've run into a problem that I can't solve and I'm hoping some of the gurus here can help me out.

I figured that with my documents I'd do everything the multi-user way and put them in the My Documents folder. My MP3s went in there. Now I've found when the total size of the "Documents and Settings\Luke" folder is over approximately 1.2 gigabytes, Windows throws an error on login and logout about being unable to load or save the user's registry data.

If I remove the files and keep it under a gigabyte the problem goes away. Has anyone seen this? I've googled to no avail.

Luke
Thursday, January 1, 2004

I always create a D drive and keep all documents there so I have never run into the problem.

It sounds pretty strange to me. Are you sure you haven't fiddled with the default settings? How file size affects the registry data is beyond me.

Stephen Jones
Thursday, January 1, 2004

Directory Size is limited to 1GB under WinXP and Win2k. NTFS and FAT32.

(Well ok it was a good guess...)

Thursday, January 1, 2004

There's no limit that I'm aware of. I've got a 26 GB directory here on Windows XP.

Something worth trying would be to change the location of the My Documents folder. Right-click it on the desktop and set a new location somewhere out of the documents and settings folder. It should move all the docs for you.

That way the NT multi-user stuff will still work as designed (as the new docs location will be unique to your user) but the OS won't have to deal with a massive documents and settings folder.

Hope that helps, and happy new year to you all!

James Ussher-Smith
Thursday, January 1, 2004

I ran into this problem a few years ago. I kept my music in My Music and had those exact problems. Ever since I've tried to keep everything in Documents And Settings\my profile rather low. I only use the My Documents folder, and keep my music in C:\music. That solved my problems.

nathan
Thursday, January 1, 2004

Thanks James, that sounds like a reasonable solution. I'm really confused as to what exactly it's doing to my profile on logout - and why it affects the registry unloading and loading. Very wacky stuff, and I can't find anything on the knowledge base.

Luke
Thursday, January 1, 2004

I can assure you that no such limitation exists, at least with XP Pro and NTFS. My profile is over 25 GB. The root of My Documents alone is over 1 GB.

What file system are you using? I wouldn't be surprised if FAT32 had some sort of limitation, though I'd think you'd be more likely to run into it by putting files in the directory than by the registry getting updated on shutdown.

SomeBody
Thursday, January 1, 2004

The only limit to the directory came with FAT16 and the fact you couldn't have more than 512 shortfile names in the root directory.

I'm wondering about thrumbnails or some kind of indexing, but it seems very strange.

The registry message may be a red herring. II can't remember when I last saw an MS error message that really said what was wrong.

Stephen Jones
Thursday, January 1, 2004

Are you perhaps logging into a domain, or some other "roaming" profile setup? If so, you probably have a "remote" profile - Windows will copy the profile over on every login, and copy it back when you log out. It has a timeout (of 30 seconds or so) for completing the procedure, after which it will log you in locally with what ever local copy of the profile it has. It's possible that it can synchronize your profile in 30 seconds when you have 1GB, but not more.

If that's the case, either switch your profile from "remote" to "local" (can be done in "My Computer"'s properties in Win2K, not sure about WinXP).

And, as others suggested, moving all your files out of your profile directory isn't a bad idea.

Ori Berger
Friday, January 2, 2004

No, it's a local profile with no domain attachment at all running on Windows XP Pro service pack 1 on an NTFS file system.

Luke
Friday, January 2, 2004

Hi Luke,
try these...
Right click My Computer, Properties, Hardware, Device Manager. Locate the entries for your hard disks and double click each entry. On the Policies tab, uncheck Enable write caching.

You will see a performance decrease because of this, but if the corrupt registry/user profiles problems cease, then you'll be certain of the cause.

Logon to another account with admin privilege and run System Restore. Choose the most recent restore point and SR should restore the user hives.

Or...
Boot into safe mode and log in as Administrator. Copy ntuser.dat from %windir%\repair to "Documents and Settings\[your user id]". Now do a system restore to a point in time prior to when the corruption message began to appear.

Or...

Relocate NTUserdat
Look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and find the profile you want to change and then change ProfileImagePath to the ntuser.dat folder that you want to use. You must manually copy or move the ntuser.dat file there.

chandan
Friday, February 6, 2004

naxsd
Sunday, February 29, 2004