Forum Discussion
Farel_Musyaffa
Jan 05, 2024Copper Contributor
Why does OneDrive have access to regedit??? Lost my files!!!
I had 2 hard drives installed in my PC, one SSD 120GB as my operating system drive and one 1TB HDD for my data. My HDD is starting to fail for some reason (maybe because of old age) as it now sometim...
Mike Williams
Jan 05, 2024Steel Contributor
The registry is where system configuration data resides so of course OneDrive will write to it.
At some point you asked OneDrive to redirect system folders like Documents. Those folders are in your user profile path. This has been a normal practice for decades through such Windows features as roaming profiles.
Please get an experienced Windows tech to look at your computer. Your own edits to the system are what is doing damage.
At some point you asked OneDrive to redirect system folders like Documents. Those folders are in your user profile path. This has been a normal practice for decades through such Windows features as roaming profiles.
Please get an experienced Windows tech to look at your computer. Your own edits to the system are what is doing damage.
- Farel_MusyaffaJan 06, 2024Copper ContributorIf I did ask OneDrive to redirect system folders to the cloud, then it didn't make it clear that that's what OneDrive wants to do. As I've stated, OneDrive only ever asked me if I wanted to back up my user folders into OneDrive. Surely you would agree that this prompt doesn't constitute a command to redirect my user profile path registry into the cloud or OneDrive's folder path?
I have never denied that my own edits were one of the causes to the incident. However, again, my edits never caused any damage until I configured OneDrive to backup my user profile folder, which is doing something that is either completely misleading or completely uncalled for. In fact, I've now done a reset of my Windows installation, did the same edits as I've previously done before setting up OneDrive, and right now my system is working flawlessly.
I understand that if you're a Microsoft employee you would like to defend your products, but it would do wonders for OneDrive if we could recognize when something is a potential design flaw that might need some reconsiderations. The damage is already done as I don't actually have any backups, and thankfully the damage could've easily been a lot worse for a few reasons, so getting an experienced tech to look at my PC (even though I wouldn't necessary call myself a beginner at the slightest) would do nothing to help. I'm just here to provide my experience with OneDrive that I can wholeheartedly summarize as confusing and frustrating, in the hopes that maybe this information will provide useful insight for future use.- Mike WilliamsJan 07, 2024Steel ContributorI am not a Microsoft employee. You will rarely find them on these community forums, only volunteers like myself who have to do their best with often unintelligble user requests.
Unfortunately " user profile path registry into the cloud or OneDrive's folder path?" makes absolutely no sense. Please take advantage of one of the ample OneDrive tutorials on the net before rambling about the cloud and registry. I've been using these tools sicne the last century and your misunderstanding of the basic concepts is a dangerous thing when turned to mucking about under the hood with your files.
These cloud sync systems have been around for a generation now. If you want to argue about the underlying design of how OneDrive (or Dropbox, Google Drive etc) works then that ship sailed a very long time ago.- johnnicincoMar 22, 2025Copper Contributor
I think your response would probably get you fired if you worked for Microsoft, and if it didn't then we all know what we would think in a case like that you conceited 'DONOR' of free unhelp.