borphos

I don't think a variable is defined for the "Default User" folder. So you can either use %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\ or set it to %DefaultUserProfile% yourself. On a side note, %UserProfile% is the current user profile. If you are needing this info for an unattended install you don't need to do anything to the default user profile in setup. If you include one on the in $OEM$\$Docs\Default User\ on the CD, setup will not touch it. If you do this, make sure to delete all of the desktop.ini files from every folder in the profile before putting it on the CD. I learned that the hard way. :-) Borphos

These days defraging your HD isn't really all that big of a deal because Microsoft succesfully addressed defragging when it was a big issue in the past. When I'm approached by a user who says something like "I ran did a defrag yesterday." or "I defrag once a week." I usually tell them "Alright!" and then think to myself. "Keep sucking that pacifier." I hear all sorts of people say all sorts of silly things about computer performance, and most of them remind me of those junk science tonics of yesteryear. So with defrag, if you feel like you need to accomplish something, go ahead run defrag often for that extra nothing of a performance increase. Otherwise just wait until the computer is slow from being bogged down by junk and perform the ultimate defrag, a reinstall. At most I run defrag on my machines once a year, and even that is probobly more often than needed. As for why windows puts large chuncks of used space in odd locations on the drive even after you defrag the drive, this is actually done on purpose. Newer drive heads seek faster than they used to by "jumping" to a predefined spot in the general vacinity of the data you want and then seeking out your data from there. These locations are predefined in the firmware on your drive. For an added performace increase, Windows puts data near the beginning of the drive, and at those points. The old behavior was to cram everything at the front, which at the time was the most efficient. I have seen a drive with the top taken off going through a manufacturers test sequence. They run through a pattern of hopping quickly to one of those points and then seeking to the next or hopping back and forth to the ponts and then seeking through the entire drive. I'm sure you can find a video of this on youtube. Borphos