I am having a hard time trying to master creating a custom default user profile and have it work correctly and not have to make adjustments for each new user whenever they log in. I created an account called tester and gave and made it part of the Administrators Group. I then made all of the setting changes I wanted, rebooted the computer and logged in as a different user that is part of the Administrators group. I then used the System Applet to copy the tester users profile to default user. I then created a new user called tester2 and then logged off and logged in as tester2. Well, all of my settings worked, but the My Documents folder under My Computer said tester's documents instead of tester2's documents. Well, I checked all of the MS articles and found out about the desktop.ini problem. I made changes to the desktop.ini file (mainly taking out the Owner=tester line) and then recopied the profile and created a tester3 account. I logged in as tester3 and had no My Documents folder under My Computer. Finally, I created a new custom default user profile without a My Documents folder and created a new user called tester4. I thought everything was fixed because tester4's documents showed up under My Computer. However, the My Music, My Videos, My Pictures, and My Web subfolders did not appear. I've heard that I can use load and unload hive in the registry to fix this or use the rundll32 mydocs.dll,PerUserInit command somewhere in the Default User template. Also, I could add the user directory to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\DocFolderPaths to fix this, but this would be undesirable unless I could have that entry automatically created when a new user logs in for the first time. I am only working with local profiles instead of roaming or network profiles. Novell takes care of the network profiles. I also just want the defaults for these folders and I want to keep them where they normally default instead of redirecting them. To sum up, I just want to have each new user use my custom Default User profile for desktop and other settings and have the My Documents folder and its subfolders created for each new user when they login. Thanks. Spike

Spike2006, SWAG, strikes me that you've gotten 99% there. What if you make a list of what you want to EXCLUDE from a users profile and have it include all else. Seems to me that would 'copy' the relevant files for each user. HTH. Ed in Texas.

Thanks Ed. I was able to get the My Documents folder and its subfolders done the way I wanted by putting a batch file in RunOnce under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\RunOnce that contained the rundll32 mydocs.dll,PerUserInit command. I am still playing around with it some, but I believe it works pretty well. I also believe that it works by not having the My Documents folder in the custom Default User profile since that command takes care of that. What I like is that the batch file only runs one time when a new user first logs in. Spike