Windows Vista: The Missing Manual

23.8. Profiles: All Versions

As you've read earlier in this chapter, every document, icon, and preference setting related to your account resides in a single folder: by default, it's the one bearing your name in the Local Disk (C:) Users folder. This folders friendly name is your Personal folder, but to network geeks , it's known as your user profile .

23.8.1. The Public Profile

Each account holder has a user profile. But your PC also has a couple of profiles that aren't linked to human beings' accounts.

Have you ever noticed, for example, that not everything you actually see in your Start menu and on your desktop is, in fact, in your user profile folder?

Part of the solution to this mystery is the Public profile, which also lurks in the Users folder (Figure 23-14). As you can probably tell by its name, this folder stores many of the same kinds of settings your profile folder doesexcept that anything in C: Users Public Desktop appears on everybody's desktop.

All of this is a long-winded way of suggesting another way to make some icon available to everybody with an account on your machine. Drag it into the Desktop folder in the Public profile folder.

But if you're wondering where the common Start menu items are, you'll have to look somewhere else. If you're prowling around your hard drive, you'll find then in C: ProgramData Microsoft Windows Start Menu. But you can get to it faster by right-clicking the Start menu and choosing Open (or Explore) All Users.

23.8.1.1. Whose software is it, anyway?

These locations also offer a handy solution to the "Whose software is it, anyway?" conundrum , the burning question of whose Start menu and desktop reflects new software that you've installed using your own account.

As noted in Chapter 6, some software installers ask if you would like the new program to show up only in your Start menu, or in everybody's Start menu. But not every installer is this thoughtful. Some installers automatically deposit their new software into the ProgramData and Public folders, thereby making its Start menu and desktop icons available to everybody when they log on.

On the other hand, some installers may deposit a new software program only into your account (or that of whoever is logged in at the moment). In that case, other account holders won't be able to use the program at all, even if they know that it's been installed, because their own Start Menu and Desktop folders won't reflect the installation. Worse, some people, not seeing the program's name on their Start menus , might not realize that you've already installed itand may well install it again .

One possible solution is to open the Start Menu Programs folder in your user profile folder (right-click the Start menu and choose Explore), copy the newly installed icon, and paste it into the C: ProgramData Microsoft Windows Start Menu Programs folder. (Repeat with the Desktop folder, if youd like everyone to see a desktop icon for the new program.) You've just made that software available and visible to everybody who logs onto the computer.

23.8.2. The Default User Profile

When you first create a new account, who decides what the desktop picture will beand the Start menu configuration, assortment of desktop icons, and so on?

Well, Microsoft does, of coursebut you can change all that. What a newly created account holder sees is only a reflection of the Default user profile. It's yet another folderthis one usually hiddenin your C: Users folder, and its the common starting point for all profiles.

If you'd like to make some changes to that starting point, turn on "Show hidden files and folders" (page 84). Then open the C: Users Default folder, and make whatever changes you like.