What is the user profile in windows administration and what are all the contents in it?
User profile is a folder that contains a collection of settings and options of a user account. The user account settings may include desktop, documents, downloads, music, pictures and environment settings like desktop background, screen saver…etc. This folder is very important in any computer or operating system because it consists of all the data related to a particular user who uses that computer. As an system / network administrator we should be perfect in managing user profiles. I will show you the contents of a general user profile folder of windows server 2003, windows xp and windows vista in this article.
- The path of a user profile folder in the windows server 2003 operating system is C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator
- The path of a user profile folder in the windows XP operating system is C:\Documents and Settings\administrator
- The path of a user profile folder in the windows vista operating system is C:\Users\Rajdesktop
I have taken screen shots of all above folders in my computer to show you, you can find them here. You can enlarge by clicking on the thumbnail of each image separately. I have installed all operating systems in C: drive, so i have used c:\ in all of above paths. This may be different in your case. Please try to understand each and every thing with bird view. You can become good network administrator by following all steps closely.
User profiles are useful to both users and administrators. Benefits to the users include, the same desktop is displayed as and when the user last logged off, each user logs on to the same computer has separate environment settings as per their settings, users will get same environment when they log on to another computer in a domain environment uses roaming profiles. Benefits to the administrators include administrator can develop and assign user profiles as per company standards, can prevent certain users from permanently changing their settings using mandatory profiles, can assign common program items and shortcuts to all users by customizing the All users profile folder. Learning and mastering on managing and customizing user profiles very important to pass mcse.
Brief explanation of contents of a user profiles folder
- Application Data folder contains any user specific application data that an application vendor has chosen to store in it. For example, outlook express or microsoft outlook application could store the user’s mail data in this sub folder. Most administrators use this folder to take backup of mail data.
- Cookies folder contains cookies. Cookies are pieces of text stored by a users’s web browser.Cookie can be used for authentication, storing site preferences, cart contents anything else that can be accomplished through storing text data.
- Desktop folder contains all files, folders and shortcuts stored
on the user’s desktop. - Favorites folder contains shortcuts from the user’s Favorites
folder in various applications. For example, when you add an Internet site to your Favorites folder in Internet Explorer, a shortcut to that site is created in this folder. - Local Settings folder contains several folders commonly used by
Internet Explorer (and other Internet applications), including Application Data, History, Temp, and Temporary Internet Files. - My Documents folder contains user-created documents. It is the default location for saving user-created documents in most applications.
- NetHood folder contains any shortcuts a user has created to network servers or shared folders. These shortcuts are
displayed in the My Network Places dialog box. - PrintHood folder can contain shortcuts to network printers.
These shortcuts are displayed in the Printers dialog box. - Recent folder contains shortcuts to document files the user
has recently accessed. These shortcuts can be displayed
by selecting Start Documents / Recent Items. - SendTo folder contains shortcuts to folders, briefcases, mail,
the computer’s floppy drive, My Documents, and so on.
These shortcuts are displayed when a user right-clicks
any file or folder, and then selects Send To from the menu
that appears. - Start Menu folder contains the Programs folder from a user’s
Start menu, and any additional shortcuts to programs that
the user has created in the Start Menu folder or any of
its sub folders. These shortcuts are displayed in the Start
menu, or in the Programs folder in the Start menu,
depending on where the shortcut was created. - Templates folder contains application templates.
- NTUSER.DAT file contains all of the registry settings that are
specific to a user account. When a user logs on, the
settings in this file are copied to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry settings on the local computer. - ntuser.dat.LOG file is used to recover the user’s
original NTUSER.DAT file if an error occurs while
updating the NTUSER.DAT file. - ntuser.ini file contains settings that determine the components
of a user’s roaming user profile that are not copied to the
server each time the user logs off.
You should create different user accounts in local computer and domain controller to practice more. I will explain you about creating different types of profiles in my next articles. Keep on viewing this blog to get more information and knowledge on windows networking concepts.
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