User Profiles

User profiles contain all the information that the computer needs to personalize your system's look and feel. Your user profile contains your desktop icons, shortcuts, personalized Start menu, and your personal file folders such as My Documents and My Pictures. The profile also contains your network settings, network printer definitions, and desktop settings, which are stored in a Registry file named NTUSER.DAT. This file is accessed as part of the Windows Registry when you are logged in.

Normally, user profiles are stored under C:\Documents and Settings, in folders with the same name as the user account. For example, the user profiles for Administrator is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator. When accounts are deleted and re-created, when Windows is reinstalled, or when users log on to domain accounts with the same name as local accounts, Windows may append something to the usernameusually the name of the local computer, the domain, and/or a number.

A profile is really just an ordinary folder. It just contains some important stuff and it's used in a special waythe contents of its Desktop subfolder, for instance, appear on your desktop when you log on, and the contents of its Start menu subfolder appear when you click the Start button. The contents of a user profile are shown in Table 28.4. (Some of the listed folders are hidden. To see them in Windows Explorer, click Tools, Folder Options, select the View tab, and select Show Hidden Files and Folders.)

Table 28.4. Contents of a User Profile Folder

Item	Contains
Application Data [*]	User-specific files needed by application programs such as Explorer and Outlook Express
Cookies	Internet Explorer (IE) data
Desktop	Icons and files displayed on the desktop. This is where desktop stuff is actually stored
Favorites	Lists of shortcuts used by the Favorites menu in IE
Local Settings	Like Application Data; includes temporary files
Documents [**]	User's actual My Documents folder
NTUSER.DAT	User's Registry data (HKEY_CURRENT_USER)
NetHood	Shortcut icons used by My Network Places
PrintHood	Shortcut icons used by Printers and Faxes
Recent [**]	Shortcuts to recently accessed documents
SendTo	Shortcuts used to fill the "Send To" context menu
Start Menu	Shortcuts displayed on the user's Start menu
Templates	Templates used by various applications to create blank documents

^[*] Some of these folders are hidden. You must select Tools, Folder Options, View, Show Hidden Files and Folders to see them.

^[**] Explorer plays games with the names it shows you. This table lists the folders' actual names, but Explorer displays "My Documents" when viewing your profile, and "So and So's Documents" when viewing someone else's. It always lists the "Recent" folder as "My Recent Documents."

You might hear the phrase "user profile" used in four different contexts. They are

• Local user profiles, which are stored on each computer's hard drive as I mentioned earlier.

• Roaming user profiles, which are stored on a domain network file server, and are copied to and from individual computers as needed when you log on and off. This is how your personal settings "follow" you from one location to another. You should know that the copiesincluding potentially sensitive filesstay on each computer after you log out.

• Mandatory profiles, which are set up by the network administrator and can't be modified by the user. They're copied to local computers for use when you log on, but aren't copied back to the server when you log off, as a roaming profile would be.

• The default profile, which is stored on your computer (or domain server) and is copied for a user the first time he or she logs on. The default profile settings are stored in C:\Documents and Settings\Default User, a hidden folder.

You can't set up roaming or mandatory profiles as a Windows XP Professional useryou have to leave that to a domain network administrator. However, if you intend to set up several user accounts on your computer, and find that you have to make a lot of configuration changes for each, you can do some useful work ahead of time by modifying the default profileI'll talk about that at the end of the chapter under "Tips from the Windows Pros."

The Profile Manager

The Profile Manager will let you copy profile data from one account to another, as well as change an account's roaming/local profile status.

NOTE

The User Profile Manager only lists profiles for accounts that have logged on to the computer at least once. When a new account is created, its profile folder is not created at that time. When the user logs on for the first time, the user's profile is created by copying the contents of the Default User profile, which is stored in \Documents and Settings\Default User.

To start the Profile Manager, click Start, right-click My Computer, and select Properties. View the Advanced tab, and in the User Profiles section, click Settings. The Profile Manager lists all profiles for the local computer, as shown in Figure 28.19.

Figure 28.19. User profile folders contain the user's Registry settings, My Documents, desktop, and so on. They can be copied using the User Profiles tool.

Select a profile from the list and select one of the three action buttons. (Not all options may be available. You can't delete or copy the profile of an account that is currently logged on.) The buttons are

• Change Type Lets you choose between a Local and Roaming profile. The Roaming option is available only when your computer is a member of a domain network.

• Delete Deletes the profile from \Documents and Settings. This does not delete the account itself, just the user's profile folder and Registry entries. You can use this button to remove an account's settings, files, and Registry entries if for some reason they have become corrupt. When the user logs back on, their profile will be copied from the Default User profile. However, deleting the profile deletes the user's My Documents file. You should make a copy of the user's My Documents folder and everything in it before deleting the original profile.

• Copy To Lets you copy one user's profile to another. At the end of the chapter, I'll show you how to use this to set up the default profile given to newly added users.

  When you use Copy To, the Copy dialog lets you select who is permitted to use the profile folder. You'll need to manually select the user accounts that will be using the profile in its copied location.

NOTE

You can't just manually copy the files and subfolders from one user profile to another. The files have exclusive security permissions, and the Registry file has security data inside it that makes the profile unusable by other users. The Profile Manager works because it changes the security data as it copies the profile.

You can configure several user accounts to use the same profile folderin essence they'll share a common desktop, permissions, preferences, and so on. To do this, use the Profile Manager to copy an existing profile to a new directory, say C:\Documents and Settings\Shared. Be sure to click the Change button under Permitted to Use to select which accounts will use the new profile. (You may select Everyone to allow all users to access the profile.) Then use the Local Users and Groups management tool to change the profile directory for the user accounts to refer to this directory.

NOTE

On a workgroup LAN, you might be tempted to mimic the domain's roaming user profile feature by storing each user's profile on a shared network folder. This doesn't work because the user will have a different SID (security identifier) on each computer, even if she or he has the same login name on each computer. The registry file NTUSER.DAT is tied to the SID, so the profile will not function on machines other than the one that created it. This is one of the essential attributes of a domain LAN: Users have a global SID that follows them from computer to computer, and this makes roaming profiles possible.

You can at least get partway there on a Workgroup network by storing the user's Home Directory on a network shared folder. See "Setting Up Home Directories" earlier in the chapter for details.

Moving Profiles with the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard

You can copy your user profiles between computers using the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. You might want to do this if you

• Upgrade computers or operating systems

• Switch between your home computer and a portable computer rented for a trip

• Decide to erase your hard drive and start over with a fresh copy of Windows

The wizard can copy your user profile (My Documents folder, important Registry settings, and so on) to a floppy disk, but it's best to store the wizard's data on a zip drive, CD-RW, or a shared network folder because the amount of information can be quite large. You can also use a direct serial cable connection between two computers, but this requires you to purchase a "Serial PC to PC File Transfer Cable" from a computer store or other vendor.

Run the wizard first on the "old" computer, the one whose settings you want to move or save. The older computer can be running Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT, 2000, or XP. If it's running older versions of Windows, insert your Windows XP CD-ROM, and run the wizard from the Setup menu. On Windows XP, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. The wizard will give clear instructions as you go.

You can choose to copy settings only, files only, or both files and settings. Windows will display the list of file types and settings it will copy. You can choose Let Me Select a Custom List if you want to modify the list of files or directories to transfer.

Then, run the wizard on the "new" computer to transfer the documents and settings into your Windows XP user account.

NOTE

If you're responsible for migrating a large number of users between computers, or moving them to Windows XP, you should know that there is a command-line version of the wizard called the User State Migration tool that you can use to automate the process. For a nice article describing the process, do a Google search on "User State Migration Tools" "Charlie Russell".