Making Icons Available to All Users

If you find that you want to make the same desktop icons and Start menu applications available to all users on your computer, rather than for just your own account, you don't have to make copies for each user. Instead, you can take advantage of the All Users profile.

When Windows displays your desktop, it's actually displaying the merged contents of two folders: Your profile's Desktop folder, and the All Users desktop folder, stored in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop. If you have an icon or shortcut that you'd like to share with all of your computer's users, you can store it in the All Users folder rather than make a copy for each user. Of course, if any user deletes the icon… it's gone for everybody.

The All Users profile contains four folders, listed in Table 28.5.

Table 28.5. Contents of the All Users Profile

Item	Contains
Desktop	Files, Icons and shortcuts that will appear on every user's desktop
Documents [*]	The Shared Documents folder
Favorites	Shortcuts that will appear on every user's Favorites list
Start Menu	Shortcuts that will appear on every user's Start menu. Shortcuts in the Programs\Startup subfolder will be run when any user logs on
Application Data [**]	User-specific files needed by application programs such as Explorer and Outlook Express. Quick Launch bar shortcuts, for example, are in Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
Templates	Templates used by various applications to create blank documents

^[*] Windows Explorer displays this folder's name as "Shared Documents," but that's done with smoke and mirrors. The folder's real name is Documents.

^[**] Some folders are hidden. To see them in Explorer, you have to select View Hidden Files in Tools, Folder Options, View.