95-98 product line did not employ user-profiling as standard, with all users sharing the same settings, although that feature could be activated in Control Panel. The user-profiling scheme in force today owes its origins to Windows NT, which stored its profiles within the system folder itself, typically under C:\WINNT\Profiles\. Windows 2000 saw the change to a separate "Documents and Settings" folder for profiles, and in this respect is virtually identical to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Recent developments Windows Vista's profiles are functionally similar to those of Windows XP, but with some differences. Perhaps the key difference is that they are stored in a "C:\Users" folder, instead of "C:\Documents and Settings." Therefore, to cater for programs which are not Vista-ready, a symbolic link is also provided under the name of "Documents and Settings" which invisibly redirects any attempted access of the latter to "C:\Users." The fact that the profile root folder appears twice in any folder listing has adverse implications for any backup program. Backup software needs to be aware of this Vista idiosyncrasy, or else it is possible to double the size of the backup by copying what appear to be two separate folders, both potentially containing the bulk of the data on the computer. A second change in Vista is that the media-specific "My Pictures" and "My Music" folders are now outside of the "My Documents" folder, instead of being subfolders (as well as removing the "My" Prefix - so My Documents becomes Documents, for example). See also User profile Roaming user profile References Vista Profile Guide Microsoft on User Profiles Changing the Windows User Profiles Directory via the registry User Profile Structure Windows administration