Description of the Users Tool in Control Panel

This article describes the Users tool that appears in Control Panel.

Internet Explorer version 4.0 and higher, installs the Users tool in Control Panel to provide a simplified way of creating, managing, and deleting user profiles. The Users tool starts a wizard that helps you configure profiles for everyone that uses your computer. The wizard also helps you configure what each user is allowed to customize in his or her profile.

The first time you use the Users tool, it creates a profile for you. You are prompted for your user name, and if you have logged on to the computer before, you are prompted for the logon password you are currently using. Once your password is verified, you are prompted to choose which items you would like customized for your profile. The items you can choose for personalizing your profile are:

• Desktop folder and Documents menu
• Start menu
• Favorites folder
• Downloaded Web pages
• My Documents folder

To select any of these items, click the check box next to the item to select it. After you choose from this list, click one of the following options:

• Create copies of the current items and their content
• Create new items to save disk space

The "Create copies of the current items and their content" option makes a copy of other users' files and settings to start with. The "Create new items to save disk space" option creates blank entries for you to add to your own personal items. When you are prompted to restart your computer, click Yes.

After configuring your profile and restarting your computer, you can then use the Users tool to add other users, specify passwords for them, and configure what items they can personalize. If you are configuring your profiles on a computer that does not contain a network adapter, the Microsoft Family Logon network client is configured to be your primary network logon. For more information about the Microsoft Family Logon network client, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: