Managing a Local User Profile

For every user account you have on a computer you have a user profile. When you create a user a folder is formed with basic information and is added to as time goes by giving different users their own experience in regard to desktop and screen savers, files, and programs.

You do have the ability to configure this from the start and if you desire to fix, or make the profile unchangeable.

All Users

First take a look at how your computer is configured for All Users, the common settings that will apply to anyone.

Navigate to: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users

Open and Review the Desktop and Start Menu Folders.

New User

After you've added a new user as I review here you will be able to see the user configuration by navigating to the default settings the system has established. In this case I have added Bob.

nt user, users profile

If you want all the settings under "All Users" to apply on the users first log in you are done. If you wish to customize the user profile follow these steps:

Log out of your Administrators account
Log in with the new User account
Make all changes you wish applied
Log out and Log back in with your Admin account

Navigate back to:C:\Documents and Settings\???
Open the appropriate folders to review the settings for the new user. If you wish to restrict the user from making changes rename the NTUSER.DAT file to NTUSER.MAN this will lock the profile for that user.

-----Managing User Passwords------>

-----Managing Accounts with Group Membership------>

Profile Path

As you can see from the work we've done above the default path for any profile is:
C:\Documents and Settings\???

If you are working with the user settings in the Management Console you see that the local path is not strictly defined as it is understood to be contained in Documents and Settings.

user profile, local profile

footer for user profile page