Internet Explorer 10 & 11: Downloading fails after moving user profile; extensions get renamed with underscore;

Question

I face a major problem with Internet Explorer 10 and 11 after moving the user profiles from C:\Users to another partition (namely D:\Users).

I followed this (german) tutorial http://windows-hilfe-forum.de/f16/benutzerordner-komplett-auf-andere-partition-verschieben-1076/ and on first sight everything worked out quite well.

However, a problem with Internet Explorer and its "Protected Mode" feature (Internet Options/Security) persists: Whenever I try downloading an (*.exe)-file, it renemes the extension from foo.exe to foo_exe. This is really annoying.

I have seen this post here on superuser.com, but this does not help me fixing the problem. IE10 downloading files has .exe become _exe

My googling and reading so far makes me believe, that Internet Explorer with "Protected Mode" enabled does download all files with potential evil extensions (e. g. *.exe) to a special virtualized folder with the renaming of the extension. Only after user approval it moves those files to the normal download folder and restores the correct extension. --> It looks like IE has trouble with these virtualized folders after moving the user profiles to another location. So this must be an issue with the path to the temporary internet files and the respective virtualized folders.

Does anybody know how to fix this trouble permanently and where the paths to these spooky folders are stored and defined? (I don't want to turn off protected mode even though this is a short term remedy)

The problem does not occur when creating a new user profile in the new profiles location. It only occurs with user profiles that were present in the old c:\users location and then were moved to the new profiles folder.

Answer 1

Had exactly the same issue. I discovered it happens because when you move the user profile to a new drive the moved folders all have Medium Integrity Level (IL), and IE Protected Mode (IEPM) runs with Low IL (thus IEPM is denied access to the folders it needs in order to handle the download). The solution is to manually change the integrity level to Low for the folders used by IEPM. Follow this procedure to fix the issue:

1. Open a Command Prompt as an Administrator
2. Go to (New_Profile_Location)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Virtualized
3. Observe that there is a "C" folder with some subfolders
4. We need to recreate the same structure for the new drive letter (the one containing the user profiles). In my case it was drive G: so I ran this command:
5. robocopy .\C .\G /E /XO /COPYALL (replace G with your drive letter)
6. Now we need to set the IL to Low for the G folder and all its subfolders (again, replace G with your drive letter):
7. icacls G /setintegritylevel L /T
8. We now need to do the same change for additional folders. At the command prompt go up one level (you should now be at (New_Profile_Location)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files)
9. Run icacls Low /setintegritylevel L /T
10. Now go to (New_Profile_Location)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History
11. Run icacls Low /setintegritylevel L /T
12. Lastly go to (New_Profile_Location)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
13. Run icacls Low /setintegritylevel L /T

This should fix it.