Missing Settings After Disabling the User Profiles Option

ID: Q130330

The information in this article applies to:

SYMPTOMS

When you disable the user profiles option, some icons may be missing from the desktop or the Start menu.


CAUSE

When you disable user profiles, Windows returns to the original profile that existed before you enabled the user profiles option. Settings created by users after the user profiles option was enabled are lost.


RESOLUTION

The user profiles still exist in user-specific folders. You can access these profiles to regain lost settings. To do so, follow these steps:

  1. Start Windows Explorer.


  2. Open the Windows folder, then open the Profiles folder.


  3. Open the folder corresponding to the user whose settings you want to retrieve.


  4. In the user-specific folder there is a Desktop folder. This folder contains the shortcuts created by that user. You can drag these shortcuts from the Desktop folder to the Windows desktop.


  5. In the user-specific folder there is also a Start Menu folder. You can drag folders from the user-specific Start Menu folder to the Start Menu folder in the Windows folder to regain missing Start menu items.



MORE INFORMATION

When you enable the user profiles option, multiple users can log on to the same computer with different user names and create custom desktops. To enable this option, double-click the Passwords icon in Control Panel, click the User Profiles tab, and click "Users can customize their preferences and desktop settings."

When you enable this option, Windows creates a Profiles folder in the Windows folder. The Profiles folder contains a user-specific folder for each user who logs on to the computer. Each user-specific folder contains custom desktop and Start menu settings.

Windows uses the original profile only as a template for new users when the user profiles option is enabled. If a user installs a new program, that program appears only in that user's profile. 


Keywords          : kbenv kbui win95 win98 
Version           : 95
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: January 16, 1999