Installing only to specific account


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My wife insisted on creating an account separate from mine, now the issue is whenever I install anything on my account, it creates a shortcut on her profile as well, other things such as using a replacement task manager seems to be global as well. Is there any way to prevent this from happening?

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AFAIK the installer should have a checkbox that allows you to choose between installing for all users or just for the one account. A replacement task manager does just that, replaces task manager therefore you can't just replace it for your user account.

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AFAIK the installer should have a checkbox that allows you to choose between installing for all users or just for the one account. A replacement task manager does just that, replaces task manager therefore you can't just replace it for your user account.

Some do, however there is an equal amount that don't, hence my question

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Some do, however there is an equal amount that don't, hence my question

It's an issue with the installer - if you elevate the installer, it can write what it wants to the global Start menu shortcuts folder.

One possibly messy way to get what you want is to disable the Start menu from displaying any shortcut from the global links folder.

It looks like you can do this using a group policy setting. You can probably copy existing shortcuts that you use frequently from the global folder to your profile folder, or re-pin frequently used programs afterwards. Open up gpedit, modify Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > Remove common program groups from Start Menu.

The downside is having to pin items manually, for installers that write only to the global shortcuts folder.

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Move the shortcut from the public folder to your own.  That way it doesn't show up under hers. 

 

Public folder All Programs in Windows 7 and windows 8 is located at

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

 

 

private folder All Programs in Windows 7 and Windows 8 is located at

C:\users\"username"\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

 

Public Desktop in windows 7 and windows 8 is located at

C:\Users\Public\Desktop

 

Short of manually pulling out the program shortcuts from these locations, the installer would have to not put the program shortcuts in these locations.

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Depends on the packaging mechanism that's been used to package the application for installation I'm afraid. Microsoft have a standard called Microsoft Windows Installer to which is down to a lot of interpretation as they themselves offer no commercial product that will package your application unless you write it via Visual Studio (which even then is pretty crude).

 

If something is packaged as an MSI, you can try supplying a switch called ALLUSERS=0 to install only as per-user. This will unfortunately depend on how the MSI has been created as even Microsoft don't always follow their own set of references as standards can be bypassed using custom actions to run arbitrary code.

Reference (for what it's worth) is available here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa367559%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

 

I would avoid redirecting the start menu for the same reasons I have listed above, installers are open to a lot of interpretation by vendors and don't necessarily follow even standard rules. I have seen software from major companies that still write to handwritten paths rather than use built-in properties or environmental variables.

 

Personally, I would suggest un-ticking any shortcut creation options if it's causing that many issues or suggest either they put up with it or get their own device. Microsoft don't have true application installation isolation for the traditional windows desktop for end-users outside of Windows 8 and modern UI applications.

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