Profile Moved to Another Drive

[patlaw]

I connected an external USB hard drive to my laptop to copy some files from it to a NAS. That completed just fine. After it finished, I checked the hard drive to see what files were remaining to determine whether I needed to copy more. There was a folder name "Users" on the external drive. Upon investigation, I saw there the next folder down was "User", which is the username of the only account on that computer. Underneath that folder are the Desktop, Documents, and such.

I tried to delete the folders, but Windows wouldn't let me. Thereafter, I disconnected the hard drive and rebooted the computer. The computer started, but it did not have my customizations. If I understand the problem, the User profile was moved to the external USB drive. When I reconnected the hard drive, the computer boot with most of the Desktop and other goodies in place. The location of the Desktop folder (determined my checking "Properties" on the Desktop folder in Quick Access) is the external hard drive (E:).

How do I get the User profile back on the C: drive? There are several articles that talk about backing the profile up to an external drive, but I don't see how to restore it. This profile was MOVED to an external hard drive. I thought about simply copying it over, but that won't work because the registry will look to the E: drive for the profile.

Please help me get my profile back where it belongs. Thanks!

[patlaw]

Never mind. I was able to use File Explorer to relocate the files back to the C drive using "restore default" under the Properties | Location tab. I have no idea how they got moved, but when I rebooted, everything was there. Sorry for the wasted bandwidth. I couldn't find a way to delete the thread. 

[JamesMartin]

We normally select C drive to keep all of our files during installation. But I think you selected other drives so you files are moved. 

[patlaw]

No, the problem was actually caused by a Lenovo utility that has since been discontinued and should have been removed from the computer. It tries to optimize Windows to use the fastest available drive, but in this case, it moved the profile. The program has now been deleted, so the problem is solved.