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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?

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3 Answers

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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:)

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Exactly like you said - Exactly what I needed. – Nick DeVore Apr 9 '10 at 18:32
Start menu is `%systemdrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu` – mbrownnyc Apr 3 '12 at 18:09
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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.

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Good point. Noted. – Nick DeVore Apr 9 '10 at 19:32
That environment variable is not the same - on Windows 7 it is C:\ProgramData, but the public profile is C:\Users\Public. – Kevin Brock Apr 10 '10 at 19:24
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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.) – nondescript1 May 17 '12 at 17:32
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It still exists - you'll now find as %SYSTEMDRIVE%/Users/Public/.

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