March Tutor

One Computer, Many Users ●

share
your pc
When the PC users in your office or home outnumber the PCs, then you’ve probably been witness to
many a case of desktop sabotage. It’s a given that each user will want his or her own settings when
accessing a computer and Microsoft Windows makes this possible. In this tutorial, we show you how
to create multiple user profiles and maintain a shared PC.

f you have more computer users programs today—each user can set the Control Panel, then Users. If you’ve al-

I than computers, odds are you’ve

discovered that different people
prefer different settings. This ap-
plies to both Windows and applications
program options once and have them avail-
able whenever using the computer.
The feature that lets you accomplish all
this is called Multiple User Profiles. To take
ready created at least one user, Windows
will open the User Settings dialog box,
with a list of users and a New User button
that will guide you through the steps of cre-
such as Word that have many options. With advantage of it, choose Start | Settings | ating additional users. If you haven’t cre-
this in mind, you may have settled for ated a user yet, a dialog box
compromising on some settings and
changing others as needed.
The good news is that you don’t
have to compromise or fiddle with
settings constantly. Windows can
track any number of users—a feature
you’ll find in both Windows 95 and
98, although we’ll cover the specifics
only for the original version of Win-
dows 98 here. The procedures are
similar across all the Windows 9x plat-
forms.
When you set this feature appropri-
ately, all users can customise their own
Desktop settings, including the icons
on the desktop, the number and posi-
tions of taskbars and the items that ap-
pear in the Start menu (see Figure 1).
Users can also set their own desktop 1: These two Desktops show differences in res-
colours, wallpaper and even resolutions. olution, colour, desktop icons and the location of the Quick
And for programs that store their option set- Launch toolbar (along the right edge of the Desktop in one and
as part of the taskbar in the other).
tings in the Registry—which includes most

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will let you turn the multi-user feature on.
Choose Next to turn on the feature and go
to the Add User dialog box. Then enter a
user name to start creating a user profile.
You can enter a first name, initials or
anything else that will uniquely identify
you on the system. As a rule of thumb, try
to pick a short name you can type quick-
ly. The more easily you can type the name,
the less of a chore it will be to type each
time you need to log on.
Click Next and Windows will let you en-
ter a password. Consider this step option-
al because the password doesn’t offer much
protection. It will stop another user from
signing on with your user name and mod-
ifying your settings directly, but because all
users have access to all files on the disk, the
password will do nothing to keep your
data files private.
If you do enter a password, you’ll have
to enter it every time you sign on, which
can be annoying. Leave it out, and you
can just type your user name and hit Enter.
If you’re still not sure whether you want to
use a password, you should probably en-
ter one. You can always delete it later.
When you finish with the password, click
Next to go to the Personalized Items Set-
tings dialog box. The choices in this dialog
box are the most important because they
control what you can customise. The five
check box items in this dialog cover the
Desktop folder and Documents menu, the
Start menu, the Favorites folder, down-
loaded Web pages and the My Documents
folder.
You can check any combination of these
items and then choose Create Copies Of
The Current Items... or Create New Items...
The personalisation choices are straight-
forward, but to understand the option for
creating new items, you should understand
how Windows keeps track of the various
settings and what Windows does behind
the scenes when you create users.
Many Windows customisations simply
reflect the contents of various directories.
For example, the Desktop is built from the
items in the C:\Windows\Desktop direc-
tory, with each icon on the Windows Desk-
top matching a file or a directory in the
Desktop directory. You can even add items
to the Desktop by copying the appropriate
file to the Desktop directory. Similarly,
each item on the Favorites list matches a file
or directory in the C:\Windows\Favorites
directory.
Most of the other settings that Windows
tracks are stored in the Registry. The Reg-
istry itself consists of two files, System.dat
and User.dat, both of which are in the Win-
dows directory. As the names imply, the
System.dat file holds the information that
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● One Computer, Many Users
applies to the system itself at all times. The
U s e r.dat file contains settings that can
change with different users—such as op-
tion settings for various programs.
When you turn on the multiple users fea-
ture, Windows modifies the Windows di-
rectory structure and creates additional
User.dat files. First, it creates a directory
called Profiles in the Windows directory.
Then it creates a subdirectory inside the
PREP WORK
Before you create multiple
users, think about the settings
that will remain the same
across the user base. You can
often save time and effort by
configuring those items first.
In general, follow these guide-
lines.
Å Any customisation that
more than one user needs is
easier to install once at the
beginning than to install later
for each user.
Å It’s generally easier for
users to delete options they
don’t need (certain desktop
icons, for example) than to
create them.
With these in mind, get as
much of the work done ahead
of time—before creating multi-
ple users—as appropriate, in-
cluding the following:
Å Install all core programs,
such as word processors, that
all or most users will need.
Å Set up all the Desktop icons
that any user will need.
Å Set up the Start Menu, with
duplicate icons in different lo-
cations, if appropriate, to
match different users’ needs.
Å Make sure the Quick
Launch toolbar includes all the
icons that any user wants.
Profiles directory for each user you define.
Create three users named Larry, Moe and
Curly, for example, and you’ll find three di-
rectories in the Profiles directory named
Larry, Moe and Curly.
Inside each of these user directories you’ll
find a User.dat file. When you log on using
any of these user names, Windows loads
the Registry using the System.dat file in
the Windows directory and the User.dat
file from the appropriate user directory.
Any changes you make to settings that go
Tutor March
in the User portion of the Registry will go
into the appropriate User.dat file. These
changes will not affect the settings for oth-
er users.
You’ll also find a new set of directories
inside each user directory. The exact list will
depend on which items you’ve told Win-
dows to personalise. Even if you don’t
check off any of the options, Windows
should create an Application Data directory
(to store your Quick Launch icons, if noth-
ing else), a Cookies directory and a Histo-
ry directory for each user.
Additional directories can vary for each
user. If you told Windows that you want to
personalise the Desktop, for example,
you’ll find a Desktop directory. Users with
their own directories for any given per-
sonalisation option will have separate con-
trol over that option. Users without direc-
tories for that option will share the standard
directories in the Windows directory.
All of which brings us back to the option
for how to create these items when adding
a user. If you choose Create Copies Of The
Current Items And Their Content, Win-
dows will copy all the contents of each
original directory to the appropriate user di-
rectory. If you choose Create New Items
To Save Disk Space, Windows creates emp-
ty directories. It’s usually a good idea to
copy the current items and let the user cus-
tomise the settings, rather than making the
user start from scratch.
When you finish defining the user’s per-
sonalisation options, Windows will return
you to the User Settings dialog box, which
will now show a list of users. To re-run
the wizard and add more users, choose
the New User button. Note that once you’ve
created a user profile, you can change its
settings by going to the Control Panel,
choosing Users to open the User Settings
dialog box, selecting the appropriate user
and then choosing Set Password or Change
Settings.
With multiple users defined, switching
from one set of user customisations to an-
other is as simple as choosing Start | Log
Off, then logging on as another user. Each
user can set the customisations he or she
p refers and most settings will survive
changes by other users.
There’s more to say about managing mul-
tiple users, but this is enough to get you
started. One final point to be aware of,
however, is that once you’ve created mul-
tiple users you’ll have to work a little hard-
er to install new programs. Most installation
routines put the program in only the cur-
rent user’s setup. One easy way around
complications is to install new programs
once for each user, installing the program
into the same directory each time.
March 2000 87