The My Computer Icon Displays the My Documents Folders of Another User (286727)

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256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

SYMPTOMS

In a Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Home Edition workgroup, if you click the My Computer icon, you can observe the My Documents folders of another user, displayed as "Username Documents", where Username is the logon name of another user.

RESOLUTION

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To work around this behavior, create a NoSharedDocuments string value in the following registry key and set the data value to 1.

For All Users:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

For Only Users That Are Logged on to the Computer:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

MORE INFORMATION

The My Documents folder for all users, except for the current user, is displayed in the My Computer window.

This behavior only prevents these folders from being displayed in the My Computer window, it cannot restrict access to these folders by other users. To restrict the access to your My Documents folder, you must use the NTFS file system and have the appropriate permissions set.

NOTE: Other users document folders are not displayed in the My Computer window if the computer is a member of a domain.