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I'd like to place some files in a folder that shows up on all user's desktop on a machine. What do I need to know about the differences between Win7 and XP to do this? Is this still possible?
Nick DeVore
Posted 2010-04-09T17:39:51.777
Reputation: 347
14
C:\Users\Public\ is the equivalent to All Users in Win 7
Desktop is the folder you want (it is labelled Public Desktop) and it is hidden so you will need to set Show hidden files, folders, and drives
The full path is C:\Users\Public\Desktop (if your system drive is C:)
Shevek
Posted 2010-04-09T17:39:51.777
Reputation: 15 408
4
I know this has already been answered, and the answer is correct for most systems. However, sometimes the public folder does get moved elsewhere, particularly if you install Windows to a drive other than C:. You can use %allusersprofile% to always go to wherever the directory is installed on the given system.
nhinkle
Posted 2010-04-09T17:39:51.777
Reputation: 35 057
Good point. Noted. – Nick DeVore – 2010-04-09T19:32:43.327
That environment variable is not the same - on Windows 7 it is C:\ProgramData, but the public profile is C:\Users\Public. – Kevin Brock – 2010-04-10T19:24:20.627
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@KevinBrock: You're right that %ALLUSERSPROFILE% points to a different directory, but the default junctions installed for backwards compatibility take you to the correct directory for most common subdirs. For example %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Desktop is a junction to C:\Users\Public\Desktop. See this stackoverflow answer for a good link on these junctions. Use dir /AL %ALLUSERSPROFILE% to view the junctions under C:\ProgramData. (You can also use the %PUBLIC% env var to refer to the public user dir directly.)
0
It still exists - you'll now find as %SYSTEMDRIVE%/Users/Public/.
Cry Havok
Posted 2010-04-09T17:39:51.777
Reputation: 3 486
Exactly like you said - Exactly what I needed. – Nick DeVore – 2010-04-09T18:32:16.833
Start menu is
%systemdrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\– mbrownnyc – 2012-04-03T18:09:05.467