I've got a Vista Machine - help!!!!

[SimpleSi]

My worst nightmare has arrived.

A special needs child has been given a laptop for use in school and its come with Vista Business on it :cry:

I thought I'd give it a go and run my WPKG software installer but I've failed on day one as even though I thought I was futire proofing a bit by making a bat file copy a file to

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Vista does't seem to follow this plan anymore

Is there a generic way to access the all user startup folder (and desktop as well)?

Or shall I start setting up a separate WPKG setup for Vista/Win7 ?

Damm - I'd thought I'd missed the Vista bullet completely

Well - I'd had a good life so far

regards

Simon

[laserblazer]

It doesn't help you, but a teacher who is long term sick, sent in her Vista Home laptop for me to put some software on. How can MS get it so wrong?

[BatchFile]

I take it blattering it with XP Pro isn't an option?? that's what I've managed to do to ALL our vista kit now.

Vista just didn't work. Didn't update properly, wouldn't install printers, slowed everything down, gaaaaah!

[BatchFile]

This may help??
What happened to "all users" in Vista? in Windows Vista Accts Passwords

[alexsanger]

You'd think after ME, M$ would have learned... Nevermind, at least 7 seems to be everything Vista could have been.

The %ALLUSERSPROFILE% should point to C\Users\Public (or %PROFILEPATH%\Public) on a Vista/7 machine.

CSIDL_COMMON_STARTUP should point to the All Users Startup folder directly. See here for more info.

[Gatt]

Have you tried disabling UAC?

This is where %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup resolves to on a Win7 Pc (AFAIK the paths are same for Vista/7 - C:\ProgramData\Start Menu\programs\startup

[SimpleSi]

mm - maybe things are stranger than I thought.

My intial problem (on further inspection) was that by bat file that I use to install WPKG, didn't have enough privileges to do reg add commands inside of it but seemed to work when I did runas administrator.

It looks like Vista had some sort of legacy support and that %ALLUSERSPROFILE% is honoured (defaults to c:\programdata)

So my startup gets run at startup and its had a go at installing things (maybe wasn't the best idea to have the HP2600 printer as a defaulty for all computers but I'll learn )

However, I don't seem to be able to get into c:\programdata\Start Menu using Win Explorer even though I've turned on show me everything.

I can see it but it denies me access to it.

Any ideas of getting around this please? (I've turned off UAC using msconfig)

regards

Simon

[Gatt]

Obvious & rhetorical question but.. you are logged in as an administrator?
As for UAC - thought u needed to disable it via the control panel and reboot?
Another one I have found is that sometimes, even logged in as an admin, you need to right click and "Run As Administrator" to get the elevated permissions to work correctly

[SimpleSi]

Obvious & rhetorical question but.. you are logged in as an administrator?

Always good to check when its me
But yes (All my users tun as admins for the easy life )

[BatchFile]

I found - before it got ditched - that turning off UAC actually caused as many problems as it fixed - sometimes the damn'd things wouldn't do anything, because they didn't prompt for authorisation, because it was turned off. again, GAAAAAH!!

[Gatt]

It may be easier to wipe it and install Windows XP or if you have it Windows 7...

[SimpleSi]

Starting to cook a bit now- once I enabled Classic Start menu - its looks and feels (and lets me into the Startup folder) like XP

[SimpleSi]

It may be easier to wipe it and install Windows XP

Nope - didn't come with any "downgrade" discs

[SimpleSi]

I've just launched IE and found the machine has been "pre-configured" by our Dark Lords in the LEA as its been pre-set to the lancs home page and got the autoconfig CLEO settings installed!


WTF(lip) are they doing sending out Vista Business machines into primaries - how much of our beloved software is going to work on it!!!!!

[BatchFile]

Nope - didn't come with any "downgrade" discs

Neither did ours!
It took a bit of digging and bodging but I've managed to get XP drivers for everything - what brand of laptop is it - I might have a driver bundle I can send you around here somewhere!