Start Menu Windows XP Home

[BGBG]

I have a question about the Start Menu. There is an All Users menu and an Owner menu. Programs are scattered throughout, same one on both lists in many cases, some with folders and others with icons. I find this confusing as there are 2 or three alphabetical lists. I am trying to organize it for a single list of programs in New Folder named for programs containing the short cuts like it is on my 98se PC.
There is only me...no other owner or users. is there any problem with organizing all these on one Programs list?
And should it be on the Owners or All Users list? I am talking mostly about the programs I have installed and use, not the ones put there by Windows for its own purposes. I am not sure which ones can be renamed and switched safely.
Any suggestions? I dont see why there needs to be same program shortcuts on both lists.

[Pi rules]

You can safely move all the folders and shortcuts (except the "Startup" folder) under either Owner or All Users, it doesn't matter. The location of them is probably in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Start Menu\Programs. Just keep the "Startup" folder where it is and cut and paste the rest. If I had to pick one I would say to put it under "All Users" just in case you make a new profile for whatever reason.
Recently, I just organized all my shortcuts into my profile's Start Menu and organized them into categories such as Education, Games, System Utilities, etc. to make it look more neat, but I had quite a few shortcuts.

[dbarrow]

The START menu is easily modified any way you want
(and was the first thing I did when XP came out as I can't stand anything cluttering my desktop and don't like sifting through a very long list of PROGRAMS)

Open Explorer to your %Systemroot% drive.
Go to \Documents and Settings
You will see:
\Administrator
\All Users
\(Your name)
\(Any other user name)

These are PROFILES.
Understand that items in All Users will be visible to anyone logging onto the machine under any user profile
Items under \(Your name) profile will only be visible to the user logged in under that name, etc.
(which if you have a second user and you don't want them to be able to have a shortcut to xyz program, you put that shortcut into your user and not under all users)

Under \All Users or \(Your user) profiles, you can create any kind of sub-menu tree you want by creating a NEW FOLDER.
If you don't want (ie: all your games) strewn throughout the PROGRAMS folder, create a GAMES folder and move them there. Similar process with SYSTEM, UTILITY, WEB, etc. etc.
Once you have created your various sub-menu folders, simply drag and drop from your PROGRAMS folder to organize in a style you prefer.

[Dan18960]

BGBG,

XP can be SOOOO MUCH FUN :mad:

You can set the menu bar to Classic - and you will have your Win 98 look back.

As for the area of Documents and Settings - don't do too much changing there as that is the depository of the user profiles for everyone setup on the computer. Actually every one has their own "computer", desktop, icon arrangements, emails, favorites, etc, etc,.

If you want to have programs "shared" among several users you can move them into the All Users area and when each person "logs on" to their respective computer they have the programs there.