Okay, my mother, father, and i all have our own admin accounts on vista. Is there a way to make so that when they install a program, it will stay on there account and there account only? Like my father installed divx which i dont mind cause i would use it too, however it put shortcuts on all of our account desktops. When i went and deleted them on my desktop it deleted them off all of our desktops. Is there a way to keep what i do on my account, stay only on my account?
Thanks

Some programs will install for All Users, without asking if this is what you want to do. When they do this, they place the shortcuts in the All Users Start Menu which is located at:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
They also place the shortcuts on all users desktops. This is why when you delete the shortcut for that program, the program is assuming you want it removed from all accounts desktops, so it will disappear from all of the accounts.
The location for each individual user to store their Start Menu shortcuts is:
C:\Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
The location for each users desktop is:
C:\Users\user name\Desktop
The only thing you can do to resolve this is to open Windows Explorer and manually delete the shortcut from each individual accounts desktop, where you do not want the shortcut. You will need to do the same for each users Start Menu/All Programs.

Ronnie Vernon Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
"duff" <duff discussions.microsoft.com>

I was able to find the folder for the desktop and get the ones i didnt want deleted, but for the life of my cant find the one for the start menu. I dont even have an appdata folder under my user name folder.
"Ronnie Vernon MVP" wrote:

Hi Duff,
AppData is a hidden folder. You can turn on hidden folders by doing the following:
1. Navigate to your user name folder. 2. Press Alt to display the folder menu. 3. Click Tools, and then click Folder Options. 4. Click the View tab, and then click Show hidden files and folders.
Charlene Charlene Shepard Windows User Assistance Team Microsoft Corporation
"duff"