XP Start Menu mess due to multiple users

[deviantchild]

Well, there aren't multiple users, just me; but Windows always creates two accounts for 'just me': one under "all users" and one under 'my username'.
Then there's the programs which, during installation, put shortcuts in one or the other without informing which - and there's the ones that ask.
So, me, the admin and only user, ends up with a Start Menu that looks and works ok until I start trying to re-categorise large groups of Start Menu shortcuts from within Explorer under either profile's tree.
Now I have a right mess with duplicate categories etc.
Is there a way to avoid this? perhaps to migrate one into the other?

 

[Martin Eddy]

I found the easiest way to do it is to Cut everything from Your Profile/Start Menu and Paste it to All Users/Start Menu and then rearrange stuff from there.

 

[deviantchild]

Yeah, thanks. Between me posting and you replying I went and did that.
After that, I downloaded and used Tidy Start Menu, which may not have the named categories a person wants (unless they pay and register) but helped greatly in sorting out the chaos a Windows repair install had created.

 

[Diplo]

One tip I always find useful is right-clicking the 'Start' button in XP and then you can choose 'Open' to open your user settings or 'Explore All Users' to open the all users settings. From there you can manage shortcuts etc.

 

[deviantchild]

It doesn't really help when both of those make up your profile. Half the stuff gets installed under 'all users' and half under your own login. This doesn't present itself (because, as a single admin, you are both) until you do a repair install, as I did, or start reorganising and a load of stuff just vanishes or (the opposite) doubles up.

Anyway, it's sorted now.

I find the Start Menu still quite clunky, and Explorer for that matter and lots of other archaic, pointless and unintuitive stuff left laying around in Windows. And no doubt Vista will continue a tradition and won't address any those things, instead opting for more of the OS equivalent of having loads of animated GIFs on a webpage.

I wonder how much of peoples' lives are taken up doing 'virtual filing'? Just how obscure have we become?!

 

[hoom]

Hmm, I find duplicates can be resolved by just moving the folder again (so you move it twice, once for the user & once for All Users)
Sorting out Start to be sensibly organised is one of the first things I do on a Windows install.
Only thing that really bugs me is that you have to have Startup in the root (All Programs)