Change in
How Windows
Home Directories
are Accessed
8 /2/2006

On Wednesday, August 2, we will change how you access your Windows home directory. Currently, your Windows home directory is a folder on the U: drive (e.g. U:\mcdermot). As of August 2, the U: drive will take you to your home directory automatically--you'll no longer need to find your personal folder. If you're familiar with how the network drives are set up on the terminal servers, we're making the U: drive act just like the terminal server's W: drive does now.

While we think this will be much more convenient, anything that expects to find your home directory in a folder on U: rather than in U: itself won't work until it is changed. This could include shortcuts, recently used file lists and, most importantly, programs you've written.

If you have written programs which refer to your folder on the U: drive, you'll want to change them to refer to the U: drive directly. For example, in Stata

use u:\mcdermot\statafile

will become

use u:\statafile

You can identify files which need to be changed by searching for files containing the text "u:\{your username}". Right-click on the folder or drive you want to search, choose Search, and type u:\{your username} (e.g. u:\mcdermot) in the box labeled Containing text. Be aware that this will be much slower than a standard search that just looks at the names of files. Once you've identified a file you need to change, your favorite text editor should have a find and replace function that can make the changes for you automatically.

If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please contact the consultant (consult@ssc.wisc.edu) as soon as possible.