I have several computers connected to my server. What I would like to do is put Windows' "special folders" ("favorites", "my music", etc.) on the network drive, and then edit the registry on all of my computers to point them to those files. That way, for example, when a user on one computer addes or deletes a favorite link, that change is reflected on all the other computers too. Does that make sense? My question is, will this work? Wll it cause any sharing problems or otherwise mess up my computers?

-Ryan Adams
Ryan's
Custom Cables

Wow. This is exactly where virtual machines like VMWare come in so handy. Set yourself up a virtual network and go for it. <G>

It sounds like you have figured out how to change the location of favorites, etc. How do you do that?

Peter
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Here is what I plan to do(I'll walk you through it for changing the favorites to a shared drive, similar steps will let you move the other special folders):

1) Create a network drive (let's say it on a machine called "server") and creat a "Favorites" folder inside it.

2) Go to each computer and map the "\\server\favorites" folder to "X".

3) Now you need to downlaod and install Microsoft's "TweakUI".

4) Start TweakUI and find the "speocle folders" section. Change the location of the "Favorites" folder to "X:\" Save your changes, close TweakUI, and restart your computer. Do this for all the computers.

5) Now when you add/remove somthign to the favorites on one machine, the change will occur on all the machines.

*The only thing to watch out for is that a)on al lyour computers, "X" is aoutomatically mapped each startup. And b) the "server" is on and running.

-Ryan Adams
Ryan's
Custom Cables

You don't even need to map a drive for this to work. A UNC path will work just as well. Good answer though :)

The registry keys that contain the values for these special folders are located in

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

You can modify them yourself, without the need for TweakUI. That will make it easier to push this change to client computers through a login script, for example.

Yeah. Thanks. The problem with using a UNC path (atleast for me), is that when you do it that way, the connection isn't mad until you actualyl access the folder. (IE, if using a UNC path, the computer dosn't connect to the remote favorites folder until you actualy try to open the favorites folder.) This means the first tiem you try to open it, it will eb slow as it makes the conenction. If you map the drive, it autoconnects on startup and therfor is less of a delay when you actualyl go to use the folder.

Basically what I ended up doing was using tweakui to make the changes, then going to the registry, exporting the keys into a .reg file and then importing that reg file on all my other computers.

Does any know of any problems that wil lresult from havinf so called "special folders" on remote drives?

-Ryan Adams
Ryan's
Custom Cables