Member Avatar for cygnusx1

Question about Vista Home Premium SP2 ...

I use Oracle VirtualBox, and saved VM snapshots are big (from 100's of MB to multiple GB at times). These are getting saved in both my username directory and in username.V2, and that's taking a lot of space. There's a lot of other duplicate stuff in username.V2 that I don't especially want.

I'm on a home machine, I never access a remote Windows server, I never sync with other devices .. can I just get rid of username.V2? Do I need that for anything?

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Short answer: don't just delete the username.V2 folder until you confirm which profile Windows is actually using and you have moved any large VM files out of the unwanted folder. and were right to point at profile-versioning, but the safe way forward is to (a) identify the active profile, (b) move VirtualBox data to the profile you want to keep (or to a non-profile drive), then (c) remove the unused profile/folder after backing everything up. See Microsoft and VirtualBox docs below for the underlying behavior. Microsoft: Deploy Roaming User Profiles.

To find which profile is active: log in as the account in question and run echo %USERPROFILE% — that shows the folder Windows is using right now. If you cannot log in as that user, check the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and match each SID's ProfileImagePath to see which local folder maps to the account. Back up any data before changing anything. (How to list and inspect profile entries is described in the Microsoft scripting blog and registry guidance.) How to list user profiles / ProfileList.

VirtualBox stores VMs under the user profile by default (%USERPROFILE%\VirtualBox VMs), so if two profile folders exist VirtualBox data may be duplicated. Move big VDI/snapshot files to a non-profile location (for example D:\VMs) or change VirtualBox's default machine folder (File → Preferences → General or VBoxManage setproperty machinefolder <path>). After moving, open each VM and use Machine → Move... if needed. VirtualBox manual: machine folder / preferences.

Removing the unused folder/profile: log in as a different local administrator, export any registry/profile data you might need, then delete the unused profile via System Properties → Advanced → User Profiles → Settings (or, if you must, remove the profile folder and the matching SID key under the ProfileList registry key). Microsoft documents the supported deletion approaches — follow them and keep a backup before deleting anything. Microsoft: Delete a user profile in Windows.

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Member Avatar for lasitha2005d

This happens when a user has a roaming profile which is accessed by a Win XP machine as well as a Vista client. The "v2" is to used isolate Windows Vista roaming user profiles from roaming user profiles created by previous operating systems.

Member Avatar for lasitha2005d

Well for Windows Vista as well as 7, .v2 is used for the roaming profile. V2 separates the profile from Windows XP and other legacy clients' profiles. Go to your profile and remove adjust the profile settings.R Click on Computer and go to manage. Then go to "Local users and groups". Go to your user profile properties. Go to profile and check the settings. You can remove the roaming path if its their.

Member Avatar for cygnusx1

Is there a way to change it from a roaming profile to a local profile? That seems like it would get me what I want ... I have two different users on this system, one of which is a local profile and has no .V2 folder, the other of which is listed as a roaming profile and does have the .V2 folder.

Thanks.

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