4. Configuring User Profiles, Environment Variables, and Startup and
RecoveryYou can use the Advanced tab in the System Properties
dialog box to configure application performance, virtual memory usage,
user profiles, environment variables, and startup and recovery.
4.1. User profiles When you create a user account on a computer, your
computer creates a user profile for that account the first time the
user logs on. A user profile contains the global settings and
configuration options that are unique to a particular user account.
Whenever you make changes to your desktop or other settings that
affect only you rather than everyone who logs on to your computer, the
changes are saved in your user profile. This is also where your
computer stores all your personal files. Any documents, music, or
other files you’ve put into your personal folders are actually stored
within your profile. I could easily spend 50 pages extolling the details of profiles,
but what you really need to know is this: On a computer connected to a domain, your IT administrators
will largely control the ways you can use your profile. If your IT
administrators create a special type of profile, called a
roaming profile, for your
account, you can use the same profile on every computer you use,
and this would ensure that you always have a consistent user
environment. When you have a roaming profile, your profile is
stored on a Windows server and a cached copy is stored on your
computer. At home or in an organization that does not use domains, you
are in complete control of your profile. Your profile contains
your desktop settings and user-specific configuration
settings. Your profile contains all the files and folders listed
when you click Start and then click your username on the Start
menu. Because your account settings and your personal data are
stored in your profile, any problems with your profile could
prevent you from logging on and could result in catastrophic data
loss.
You can view the profiles on your computer by following these
steps: Click Start→Control Panel→System and Security→System. In the System console, click “Change settings” under
“Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings.” Alternatively,
click Advanced System Settings in the left pane. On the Advanced tab, click Settings under User
Profiles. In the User Profiles dialog box, shown in Figure 8, you’ll see a list of profiles
stored on your computer according to the associated account name,
size, type, status, and date last modified.
As you can see from the list of profiles, profiles can grow
quite large. On this computer, my profile is 783 MB in size. On my
primary computer, my profile is a whopping 5.2 GB in size. That’s a
lot of data for the computer to drag around. In the profile list shown
in Figure 20-8, you should also note that
several names are listed as “Account Unknown.” These entries aren’t
for corrupt profiles or necessarily for profiles that should be
deleted. Rather, these entries are typically for profiles created when
a computer was a member of a domain, and since the computer was
removed from the domain, it no longer recognizes the related accounts
to which the profiles belong. In the User Profiles dialog box, you can: - Change the type of profile
On a domain, your IT administrators may use the Change
Type option to change your profile from the default profile
type—local profile—to a roaming profile or vice versa. Other
settings you must configure in your user properties to ensure
that you get the correct environment when you log on. - Create a copy of a profile
Use the Copy To option to create a copy of a profile and
all its related data. As you cannot copy a profile that is
active, you’ll likely only be able to create a copy of the
default profile. - Delete a profile
Use the Delete option to delete a profile that is no
longer needed. You cannot delete a profile that currently is
logged on. If you delete a profile from an account that is still
being used, the computer will create a new profile the next time
the other person logs on.
Because so much of your important personal data is stored in
your user profile, you might want to create a backup copy of your profile. As long as you aren’t
logged on to an account using a profile, you can copy a profile to a
folder by completing these steps: In Windows Explorer, create a new folder for storing the
profile data. In the User Profiles dialog box, click the profile you want
to copy and then click Copy To. In the Copy To dialog box, shown in Figure 9, click Browse, locate
the folder you created for storing the profile data, and then
click OK.
Under “Permitted to use,” click Change. Use the Select User
or Group dialog box to specify the user or group who should be
granted the Full Control permission for the profile data and then
click OK. No other user or group will be granted access to the
profile data. In the Copy To dialog box, click OK. In the Confirm Copy dialog box, click Yes to confirm that
you want to delete the contents of the new folder you created and
store the profile in this location. You’ll now have a complete backup copy of the
profile.
To ensure that a corrupt profile can’t prevent you from logging
on, you should create at least one additional administrator account on
your computer. If you find that you can’t log on to your primary
account due to a profile or other problem, you can log on to the
backup administrator account to try to resolve the
problem. When you are logged on to the backup administrator account,
you can try to use System Restore, to restore your
computer to a previous point in time. Although the restore may cause
you to lose your most recent setting changes, you won’t lose all the
data in your user profile. If you find that you aren’t able to restore
your computer with a working profile for your primary account, you can
try to restore your computer from backup. Alternatively,
you can do the following to restore logon: Log on to your computer with the backup administrator
account. Create a copy of your profile in a working folder, or create
copies of your profile folders in Windows Explorer. Delete your profile. When you delete your profile, all your
personal data will be permanently lost if you haven’t backed it up
or copied it. Log off the backup administrator account. Log on to your primary account. When you log on, Windows 7
will create a new profile for you. You can then copy your personal
data back into your personal folders.
4.2. Environment variablesYour computer uses environment variables to track many
different aspects of the computer configuration—from the location of
your user profile, to the computer name, to the processor
architecture. Environment variables are divided into two general
classes: those that the operating system uses, called system
environment variables; and those that are specially related to the
currently logged on user, called user environment variables. If you access a command prompt
and type set, you’ll see all the
environment variables that are currently being used. In the System Properties dialog box, you can view and configure
environment variables by completing these steps: Click Start→Control Panel→System and Security→System. In the System console, click “Change settings” under
“Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings.” Alternatively,
click Advanced System Settings in the left pane. On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables. This
displays the Environment Variables dialog box shown in Figure 10. You can now configure environment variables using the
following techniques: To create an environment variable, click New under “User
variables” or under “System variables,” whichever is
appropriate. In the New Variable dialog box, type the variable
name and value in the fields provided and then click
OK. To edit an existing environment variable, select the
variable in the “User variables” or “System variables”
listbox. Click Edit under “User variables” or under “System
variables,” whichever is appropriate. In the Edit Variable
dialog box, type a new value in the Variable Value field and
then click OK. To delete an environment variable, select it and click
Delete.
When you create or edit system environment variables, the
changes affect the entire system when you restart the computer. When
you create or edit user environment variables, the changes take effect
the next time you log on. NOTE Programs that you run from the Start menu or Run dialog will
pick up the new environment variables when you quit and restart
them. So if you are setting an environment variable for use in the
Command Prompt, you need only close it and reopen it for the new
environment variable to take effect. 4.3. Startup and recoveryStartup and recovery options control the way Windows 7
starts and handles failures. You can view and configure startup and
recovery options by completing these steps: Click Start→Control Panel→System and Security→System. In the System console, click “Change settings” under
“Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings.” Alternatively,
click Advanced System Settings in the left pane. On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and
Recovery. This displays the Startup and Recovery dialog box shown
in Figure 11.
If your computer has multiple bootable operating systems, you can set the
default operating system by selecting one of the operating systems
on the “Default operating system” list. These options change the
configuration settings that Windows Boot Manager uses. At startup of a computer with multiple bootable operating
systems, Windows 7 displays the startup configuration menu for 30
seconds by default. To boot immediately to the default operating
system, clear the “Time to display list of operating systems”
checkbox. To display the available options for a specific amount
of time, select the “Time to display list of operating systems”
checkbox and then set the desired time delay in seconds. When the system is in a recovery mode and is booting, a list
of recovery options might be displayed. To boot immediately using
the default recovery option, clear the “Time to display recovery
options when needed” checkbox. To display the available options
for a specific amount of time, select the “Time to display
recovery options when needed” checkbox and then set a time delay
in seconds. System Failure options control what happens when the
system encounters a fatal system error (also known as a STOP error). The available options for the System
Failure area are used as follows: - Write an event to the system log
Logs the error in the system log, which allows you to
review the error later using the Event Viewer. - Automatically restart
Check this option to have the system attempt to reboot
when a fatal system error occurs. - Write debugging information
Choose the type of debugging information to write to a
dump file if a fatal error occurs. You can then use the dump
file to diagnose system failures. - Dump file
Sets the location for the dump file. The
default dump locations are
%SystemRoot%\Minidump for small memory
dumps and %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP
for all other memory dumps. - Overwrite any existing file
Ensures that any existing dump files are overwritten
if a new STOP error occurs.
Click OK to save your settings.
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