IT Legend

Fighting Another Legacy of the NT Era Hiding network shares by appending a dollar sign is a common practice among administrators. While by itself that is neither good nor bad, it is a perfect example of how customs establish themselves in the IT industry in exactly the same way they do in other subcultures. Putting it differently, another fine specimen of an IT legend.

Some time ago I wrote about a misconception so common that it might pass as an IT legend - the confusion of HKU\.Default with the default user’s registry hive. Recently I came across another interesting misapprehension. As you know, the profiles base directory (usually C:\Documents and Settings) contains not only one special sub-folder, Default User, but also All Users, whose purpose is well-known: When Explorer builds the start menu and the desktop it pulls entries both from the logged-on user’s profile and from the all users folder. That is, by the way, the reason why standard users (i.e. non-admins) cannot modify some of the icons on the desktop and in the start menu - those that reside in the All Users folder, which is writeable only for administrators.

Most technical folks have stumbled across the registry hive HKEY_USERS\.Default at some point. Many of them think they know what it is used for. Interestingly, most who do are wrong.