LOOK AT THE PROS AND CONS OF USER PROFILES

User Profiles in Windows 95 can be helpful or a hindrance. They allow your users to customize their working environment with items such as desktop shortcuts, drive mappings, and desktop wallpapers. This is useful in small network installations, especially when users share equipment. However, User Profiles shouldn't be confused with the control that administrators can apply to 9x systems with the Policy Editor.

To determine whether User Profiles are turned on, go to Start | Settings | Control Panel | Passwords | User Profiles. By default, the All Users Of This PC Use The Same Preferences And Desktop Settings option is selected, which indicates that User Profiles are turned off. You can turn on User Profiles by selecting If The Users Can Customize Their Preferences And Desktop Settings; Windows Switches To Your Personal Settings Whenever You Log In.

User Profiles are kept in the <system root>\windows\profiles folder, in separate folders named for each of the usernames. Within these folders are Start Menu and Desktop folders, and they allow the administrator to easily manage the shortcuts that appear in these elements of the user interface.

For example, you can navigate to a user's profile folder, open the Desktop icon, and then drag in an Excel icon from your own profile. This will give the user easy access to Excel the next time he or she logs on. When the computer is on a peer-to-peer network, you can use this method to distribute icons to other Windows computers, even while users are logged on. If the computer is part of a larger NT network, examine roaming profiles and policies to deliver the required control over your computers.

Not all settings are governed by User Profiles. Users can individually make and break network mappings without affecting the list of drives that are presented to other users on the system. However, printers and connections to network printers are shared between all users who have User Profiles turned on.

Imagine that you've diligently set up a network printer within the individual user profiles on a computer that's operated by multiple users. If one of the users deletes that printer, the rest of the users who log on to that computer will find the printer removed, regardless of the fact that they're using separate profiles.

However, if an application requires only a redirected LPT port to print to, this could be set up in a login script either during network login or as a batch file when Windows starts up.

Another setting that's shared between users of a Windows 95 computer is the configuration of the Recycle Bin. If a user bravely turns on the Do Not Move Files To The Recycle Bin. Remove Files Immediately On Delete property, this setting will apply to all users who log on to that computer. Users who are unaware of this change will be very unhappy if they delete something by mistake and aren't able to recover it.