Hi Bob,

I am Sumit, an Independent Advisor and a 2-Year Windows Insider MVP here to help.

Users folder contain the user information about the persons who use the computer.

Inside that folder, it would have your user profile folder that contains your files, including Desktop, downloads, Documents, etc.

You should NOT try to delete any folder inside C: drive(even if it is possible by chance) unless you want to break Windows.

The Default User profile is a template profile for all created users. Whenever you create a new user profile, the profile is built based on the Default User profile.

The Public Folder is for sharing files with all other users that in the system, or on network. All local users can access this profile, but cannot access your private user profile.

Source: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/dbb36882-8552-4d18-af95-c73a9a40a0d3/what-are-the-default-and-public-folders-in-cusers-for?forum=w7itprogeneral

Yes, %LocalAppData%\Programs is the default folder to "install programs for a single user only" in MS Windows. It's been available since Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2.

Such programs are often called Per-User Applications (PUA) in MS documents. While the knowledge about the existence of PUA now is widely spread, many still are not aware of the infrastructure, environment, and tools that MS provided to support them. The folder in question is a part of that infrastructure.

Note: This folder may have a different name depending on the specific Windows setup. The programs should use the corresponding KNOWNFOLDERID constant FOLDERID_UserProgramFiles to locate it properly.

References:

• Windows Installer Documentation → About Windows Installer → Installation Context
• The Windows Shell Documentation → Shell Constants, Enumerations and Flags → KNOWNFOLDERID → FOLDERID_UserProgramFiles

Only C:\ProgramData actually exists as a "real" folder. C:\Users\All Users is a symbolic link to C:\ProgramData. That is, C:\Users\All Users points to C:\ProgramData, so if you navigate to the former, you are automatically redirected to the latter. That is why they appear identical.

C:\ProgramData is known as the "All Users Profile" and is required for the correct operation of Windows 7. Please do not delete it, if Windows even lets you.

C:\Users\All Users is there for backward compatibility. Poorly-written applications do not retrieve the path of the All Users Profile correctly. They say, "Windows, give me the name of the profiles directory." Windows says, "C:\Users." And the program says, "Okay, I know the All Users profile is called All Users and it's inside the profiles directory, so it must be C:\Users\All Users." Really, what the program should say to Windows is, "Windows, give me the path of the all users profile," to which Windows would say, "C:\ProgramData."

Hi

C:\users is the folder of all user profiles already connected on this PC. If you want backup user profile and data you should backup the content of this folder.

Please don’t forget to accept helpful answer

Hmm, yeah that looks like it should be OK to me. Or at least nothing is jumping out.

Is it just the one user on that machine that runs into this problem or do other users get the same sort of thing?

If it’s the one user I think my next stop would be the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

In there should be all of the redirects. Could be that something has gotten stuck on something and could be corrected.

If it’s multiple users I guess RSOP on that machine would be my next port of call.

Hi MM-2020,

This is Wil, one of the independent advisor and an expert with Windows 10.

I understand your concern about a folder for the domain account.

Basically, when you requested to run a program as an admin and used a credential apart from the current account that you are using to log in to the computer, it will really create a folder inside c:\users which would contain logs, program data file or configuration for the application that you just run.

I hope my explanation help you. If you need further assistance please do reply back and I will respond as quickly as possible. Have a nice day.

Thanks,

Wilfred P.

Independent Advisory

How do I know which account is my current Users account? 

Press the Windows key + R, then type one or the other of these commands:

cmd  /c  echo  %UserName%  & pause

(to see your account name)

cmd  /c  echo  %UserProfile%  & pause

(to see the name of your profile folder)

Please remember to mark my reply by clicking "Did this solve your problem?".

On Windows 11, at least, C:\Users\Default is an actual directory.  And C:\Users\Default User is a link to C:\Users\Default.

Short answer, yes it is a security risk, you are telling someone the username for your system. However, the better question is, should you go to the effort of hiding it based on the security risk?

Unfortunately this question is much harder to answer with a simple yes / no answer and depends a lot on your personal (and your organisations) attitude to risk.

If someone is trying to hack into their system having valid credentials for the system is obviously a good way to go, hence the amount of effort that goes into phishing style e-mails, websites etc. By showing your username you have given the attacker half the things they need (assuming no MFA etc.).

That being said often usernames are often very easy to guess. Built in accounts e.g. Administrator in Windows and root in Linux have been targets in the past, although they are better protected from Network logins these days. In corporate environments, usernames are often e-mail addresses or the user part of the address (the bit before the @ symbol).

As well as considering how available your username is in the public domain already you need to consider where is the video going to be shared. For example if you are in a corporate environment where usernames are firstname.lastname and this video is only going to be shared on the company intranet. Well, quite honestly, anyone with access to the video can guess your username.

Based on the hints above you can make your mind up about whether or not you need to hide your username. Let's look at this from another angle, how hard is it to hide the username. Assuming that your demonstration works just as well from any directory on your computer, why not put everything you need in C:\temp and then there is no need to show a path with your username in?

In summary, the choice is yours and I hope you this gives you a guide to how to consider the risks and make an informed choice. Personally (sorry SO rule followers, I will give a quick opinion here) I would avoid showing it as generally it is easy to build a video from a temp directory rather than one off C:\Users\<username> equally when using a Linux system I don't lose any sleep over the fact that the prompt shows my username.