Where’s My Stuff? The User Profile Structure

Windows 8, 7, and Vista store your documents, music, and pictures in a different folder layout than did Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows.

Each user’s personal files are stored in a folder with the same name as the user account name inside folder \Users. In some cases, Windows adds other letters or numbers to the user name to create a unique folder name.

This folder is called a user profile, and it contains not only your personal documents but also some hidden files that contain your personal Windows Registry data (which contains information used by Windows and application programs), temporary files used by Internet Explorer, and so on. Another folder inside \Users is named Public, and this ...

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