Admin/User Accounts confusion...

[pjfarr]

After years on Win98 I finally eased into XP (pre-installed on a new machine) and I find that I'm having a little trouble grasping the whole User Accounts thing.

The other day I decided I would drag 'n' drop my Favorites, Start Menu, and Send To folders from my Admin. folder to the All Users folder to make them globally accessible. No prob, worked fine. Then, however, I thought I'd like to keep certain things on the Start Menu and Favorites folder exclusive to me afterall. Since I had moved the actual folders from the Admin. directory earlier, I had to recreate them there again and drag those particular files back to where they were before (made sure the paths and names were the same as the originals). Now those files are not visible on the Start and Favorites menus, even after after logging off then back on.

I know I f'ed something up...and although everything works fine in regards to the All Users menus, I'd like to be able to figure this thing out.

~P.J.F.

 

[smah]

Are you sure that you're using the account that you think you are? It sounds like you're using this feature correctly, they are probably just in the wrong place. Many of the pre-installed OEM machines will start with an account named 'Owner'. The account named Administrator is not (and should not) normally used.

 

[smah]

I should also add that the foldername that you see under Documents & Settings won't neccessarily be the same as the username that you see and use on the Welcome Screen. The foldername is set when you first log on with a particular user. If you change the username after that, the foldername remains as it was.

 

[linney]

XP has System Restore, which is worth knowing about if you have problems and want to revert to a time before you made changes.