Shortcuts on Vista desktop...

Factual Questions
1

Ok, if you have multiple users on your pc, have you ever noticed…

  1. If you install a game or other program, some of them will create a shortcut

on the desktop, some won’t.

  1. Those that do this will invariably put a shortcut on every other desktop on

the computer.

  1. And if you want to move* or delete these shortcuts, you have to put in the

admin password to do so.

  1. When you do this, whether or not you are standard or admin, it will delete or

screw up the shortcuts across all the other desktops.

My wife loves to download games. I wind up with many shortcuts that I don’t

want. If I move them, and hers gets deleted or moved, I get in trouble.
I also would like to keep the kids from getting into some programs, Parental

controls is useless for this. So the best way to keep them out of something

would be to remove any shortcuts from the desktop.

I just want to have my desktop, without having my wife’s and kid’s stuff all

over it too.

Isn’t that why you have different user accounts anyway?? Not to just personalise

your own, but to have your own different programs set up the way you want??

So my question is this, Is there a way to stop Vista from doing this?

*My usual approach to getting multiple shortcuts off my desktop is to make a

folder and dump them all in it. Now Vista demands the password and will make

some of these drop off of the wife’s desktop as well.

2

The general solution is to put the shortcut just on your own desktop. Most installation programs have an option to either make the program available to the current user or to all users. If you install it and only make it available to the current user, then that’s the only person who gets the shortcut.

You can move the shortcuts so that only she sees it, but you need to be an administrator. I’m not as familiar with Vista’s setup, but there are individual user accounts in XP under “C:\Documents and Settings” (the Vista name is different). There is also an account for “all users.” If you go into that folder, you’ll see desktop. That has items for all users. You can cut the files, then go to your wife’s folders and paste the icons into her desktop folder. They’ll show up for her but not for you.