It’s really annoying learning a new OS. Well, for me it is anyway. Even though I’ve worked in IT for more than ten years, I find it like trudging through the snow. Recently I wanted to configure a laptop with some short cuts on the desktop for All Users but of course this has changed in Windows 7 [apparently it changed in Vista too but I never played around with Vista much as it was a wonky OS]. So if you’re wondering like I was wondering, here’s a how-to for you.

Method Two - Copy to new folder location

Use the table below to find the new folder location for the Desktop and Start Menu folders. Other new folder locations can be found at this Web page.

Table A

Table B

These are the old and new locations for the Desktop and Start Menu folders and the Junction Point location that links them.

Copy the shortcut. Navigate to the new folder in Explorer and paste it, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D

You can copy the shortcut directly to the Users\Public\Public Desktop folder.

Just as in method one, you will need to provide administrator permission. If you are using Vista, you will also be prompted by the UAC.

As you can see in Figure D, Users\Public\Public Desktop is where the actual desktop shortcut files now reside in Vista and Windows 7.

You can read the entire article at TechRepublic.

I recently discovered that a Dell Precision M4300 labtop’s battery had died. Being that the machine was purchased with a 3-year warranty, I thought the replacement process would be fairly easy. But that was not to be the case. Dell considers the battery to be a separate “consumable“, therefore, its warranty is seaprate: one year.

Dell, do us all a favor: make this readily apparent from jump. When we purchase machines with 3-year warranties, it’d be nice to know that that includes the whole machine, not parsing it out into this or that separate part.