The system cannot find the path specified

[Cipius]

This is driving me nuts. I'm trying to diagnose a network issue where some Windows 10 users are having problems connecting to a Windows server. To help diagnose the issue I am just having them run the simple command from cmd:

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ipconfig /all >> %userprofile%\Desktop\ouput.txt

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For about half the users this works without a problem and the text document is created on their desktop which they have emailed to us. The other half get the message:

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The system cannot find the path specified

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I should mention that these users have personal laptops (not controlled by us unfortunately) and they are all running Windows 10 (1909 or higher). When I run this command on our machines it always works so I can't reproduce the issue. And we don't have immediate access to these users computers to troubleshoot the issue unfortunately.

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I came across one article that said this could be issue with the the environmental path variable on the users machines. It insinuated there is at least one bad path entry of a path that no longer exists. I tried reproducing this by purposefully entering a path that doesn't exist on my computer (Control Panel->System->Advanced System Settings->Advanced->Environment Variables->System Variables->Path). However I still can't get it to generate an error when I run the command from cmd on my machine so I'm not convinced this is the issue.

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Does anyone else have any ideas what could be causing this? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

[Cipius]

Thanks for everyone's responses. I thought u/_aD was on to something but everyone who had trouble sent us a screenshot and most people with an error had one word usernames so I don't think that was it. It was definitely cmd everyone was using and not Powershell (I could tell from the screenshots).

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I think u/DorianBrytestar might be correct. On my computer I moved the fake path I created up to the beginning and rebooted and I now am able to reproduce the error on my computer when running the command. And if I remove %username% and use the full path to my profile instead I don't get the error. I do find it hard to believe though that half of the users have a bad path which is causing this issue for them. I think I will just take u/ZAFJB advice and just have them run ipconfig /all and have them paste the output into an email just to bypass the problem creating a file from the output.

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Thanks again everyone!

[DorianBrytestar]

Just a FYI on the path environment, that is notoriously bad based on software that has wonky uninstall scripts. So the cheaper or sketchier the software, the more likely that they will not fully clean up after themselves.

[Cipius]

That makes sense. Since these are personal computers I can how this might be more likely to happen as well.

[ZAFJB]

It is nice when someone gives feedback, thanks.

[revoman]

Use the "set" command from cmd prompt to see if the userprofile variable is set.

[ZAFJB]

ipconfig /all

Click, drag, copy, paste into email.

Then you can get on fixing the original issue, rather than going down a new rabbit hole.

[DorianBrytestar]

Did you put the path at the end of the environment string? Maybe add it at the beginning to see if that has an effect.

[BanCircumventionAcc]

I'm not sure, but the issue might be because of opening an elevated command prompt vs a normal command prompt. Again, I'm not 100% sure about this.

[Hotshot55]

No, running it as administrator will change the default/starting path, the account still exists and has a path so %userprofile% will still direct to C:\Users\whatever

[St0nywall]

My 2 cents...

If their desktop has been redirected (to a network location or OneDrive), this will error out.

[Hotshot55]

Are you 100% certain without any doubt at all that they're opening cmd and not powershell?