My frozen school onedrive is still connected to my personal home pc

Question

When I was still in school a couple years ago I had my school onedrive connected to my pc, and since then it has for some reason been the default for my pc's base folders (Images/documents/desktop/etc)
I didn't realize this until I had deleted the onedrive folder as it was taking a lot of space up, now a lot of my games which store settings and local content in the documents folder have been accidentaly wiped.
Which is my fault. how ever even after deleting the folder its still the default, how do I disconnect it from my pc without having to sign in, as that's impossible for me to do as the account is blocked from being signed in.
Thank you

Answer 1

Hi @Jonty Tunks, 

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.  

To start, you can remove Windows’ connection to the old school account even without signing in. Just open Settings > Accounts > Access work or school, look for the school account if it still appears, select it, and choose Disconnect. After that, go ahead and restart your PC so Windows can properly reset any background links that were still active. 

From here, your system may still hold on to older OneDrive sign‑in information. Clearing those outdated credentials makes sure Windows stops trying to revive the old account. You can do this by opening the Control Panel, going to User Accounts > Credential Manager, and then selecting Windows Credentials. If you see items related to OneDrive or your school email, remove them one by one. 

There’s also a small settings file that can cause OneDrive to reuse old configuration data. Press Windows + R, type:

%localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\settings

 

and press Enter. If you notice a file named PreSignInSettingsConfig.json, feel free to delete it. This helps ensure OneDrive doesn’t try to reconnect using the old institution profile. 

Finally, even after removing all account traces, Windows may still believe your Documents, Pictures, Desktop, and other user folders live inside the old OneDrive directory. To bring them back to your local user folder, open File Explorer, right‑click the affected folder (for example, Documents), choose Properties, and open the Location tab. Select Restore Default, then apply the change. If Windows asks whether you want to move any files from the previous location, choosing “Yes” is typically the safest option(but if the old OneDrive folder was already deleted, there may be nothing to move). Repeat this for Desktop, Pictures, and any other folder still pointing to OneDrive. 

I hope the information above helps guide you through the issue, and I truly hope it makes things a bit easier on your end. If you have any updates, new questions, or if something doesn’t behave the way you expect, please feel completely comfortable replying here. Please take your time, I’m here to support you and happy to assist further whenever you need. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding!  

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment". 

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.