i have recently upgraded from win 98 to xp pro, and has found the folder structure (e.g documents and settings instead of just c:/my documents) and different accounts and access rights very confusing, like different people has different folder rights and stuff like that. i was wondering if theres any website that has some sorta clear explaination to help me understand this? i dont really spend money on books.

In the windows registry their are several keys including local maching and current user. In the C:\documents and settings\ folder there is an entry for each user as well as a "All Users" Entry. In each users folder all the websites that users visits are stored here, contents of the desktop, my documents and part of the start menu are stored here. Everything in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER branch of the registry and some miscallaneous files from different programs(such as outlook). C:\Windows contains mostly system files C:\Program Files contains programs and program files C:\_restore contains backed up data about windows. In NT C:\WINNT\Profiles is the equivalent of C:\Documents and settings in XP. The move was made to seperate system files and non-system files. In the c:\documents and settings\AllUsers contains information such as menus that appear in the start menu for everybody. Hope this has been helpful. David

yes it has been very helpful thank you very much, it just seems that everything i do now has some sort of more serious affect. like when i delete a shotcut off the start menu it warns me about affecting everyone. and all that quotas and stuff. my friend told me i should of got the home edition instead but someone else told me to get the pro edition for some extra stuff and they are the same so i did. but you have been helpful thanks!