User Profile in Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000, is an user-definable information about a user’s work environment, including desktop settings, network connections, printer connections, and Start menu items.
In Windows NT, when a user logs on to a workstation, his or her profile is saved locally in a personal subfolder of the %SystemRoot%\profiles folder. You can also store user profiles on a network share to allow users to access their work environment from any workstation.A user’s profile is stored in a folder named after the username and consists of a registry hive and a series of subfolders whose functions are listed in the following table. If additional software is installed on the computer (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer), additional subfolders might exist within the user’s profile folder.
In Windows 95 and Windows 98, ntuser.dat and ntuser.dat.log are replaced by user.dat and user.da0, which make Windows 95 and Windows 98 user profiles incompatible with Windows NT and Windows 2000 user profiles.
| Subfolder or hive | Contents |
| Application Data folder | Vendors’ application-specific data |
| Desktop folder | Files and shortcuts on the Desktop |
| Favorites folder | Favorite locations |
| NetHood folder | Shortcuts to Network Neighborhood items |
| Personal folder | Users’ personal documents |
| PrintHood folder | Shortcuts to Printer Folder items |
| Recent folder | Shortcuts to recently opened documents |
| SendTo folder | Shortcuts for the SendTo menu |
| Start Menu folder | Start menu shortcuts |
| Templates folder | Shortcuts to templates |
| ntuser.dat | Copy of the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive |
| ntuser.dat.log | Transaction log for error recovery |