TIP: Short Date Mask and other settings

[MasterRacker]

Most everyone knows by now that you have to change the Short Date in Control Panel&gt;Regional Settings to mm/dd/yyyy for Y2k. Something we recently found here is that is a user setting instead of a machine setting. Very annoying on a machine used by more than one person. I have a method that helps with this and has the advantage of propagating all kinds of default settings to multiple users on a machine.<br>
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1. Use a single domain based setup ID for building initial machine images (Ex. SETUPID).<br>
2. Do the full NT install, with apps and SPs, etc using that ID.<br>
3. Make all user default settings you want to go to all users. This can be Short Date, screen saver, Explorer view options, workgroup templates for MS Office. Anything you want except drive mappings.(If you try to propagate drive mappings you will get credential problems under other IDs)<br>
4. Log onto the local machine as the local administrator.<br>
5. Copy C:\Winnt\Profiles\SETUPID\Ntuser.dat to C:\Winnt\Profiles\Default User.<br>
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Now every time a new user logs on from that machine, they will recieve all the settings you just made. Obviously this wouldn't affect existing user profiles on a given machine and roving profiles would have more issues (I don't use them), but the principle could probably be adapted. Comments?

 

[culshaja]

WARNING:One problem with this for VB and VBA coders is that they can't access the time from the date without having to format the date first to show the date, which you don't have to do with a none manually set date format. Might be important to tell your VB programmers if you have any as any legacy code that relies on the time being part of the date (which is usuall) then it will fall over.<br>
<br>
James