So far i've tried using the vista home premium OEM edition. the conclusion would be: makes me love xp all the more.

vista have some heavy security measures. too heavy in fact IMO. the whole thing is like a maximum security prison. mind u, using it for a few hours is enough to make me feel like i'm trapped in a prison i own.

why i say so? 1) there's the new 'ownership thingy' where files n folder have owners (users/groups). plus side: i cant touch stuff that arent mine so cant other users. bad side: being administrator doesnt make u own every file. 'system' does, not u. yes.. bill gates owns the piece of OS u just bought, not u who pay for it.

So to change something say, the start menu, u have to gain ownership of the folders involved. i can tell u creating a new folder in the start menu after gaining ownership takes 2 confirmations. renaming it, another 2 confirmations. copying stuffs into it, another 2. get the idea? it's very troublesome to do a simple task. FYI, vista's default start menu is basically micosoft spam. there are tonnes of things starting with the word windows/microsoft.

2) In xp, u can assign a different location for your 'my documents'. typically i assign it to D: so i can format C: without having to touch D:. In vista, my documents have been break apart into a bunch of folders. while the documents can still be relocate, others can't. so all your music file in my music ends up in C: which we all know is prone to reformatting.

3)I stumbled upon this accidently while trying to circumvent problem 2. I tried copying everything to D: will leaving a shortcut to them in the user directory. the shortcut works but not i have 2 sets of my musics,my videos, etc... no good. so i try to delete the shortcut. I can't. there is no way to delete anything from that directory. I've tried all the methods i know of. the shortcut just cant be deleted.

Now this brings a serious issue. what if a virus successfully create a copy of itself in that folder? don't tell me the virus will gain 'immortality' n cant be killed. I'm no expert but if this is possible then vista is down the drain.

then we can thank microsoft for making viruses immortal.

Ownership of files. Its in XP but the Administrator account works differently. Its implemented more. This has more background when it comes to security a company network. Whoever creates a file has Ownership. Meaning, someone else can't make that document their own and change it around, unless given permission by the Owner/Creator.

In the past, when someone's HDD would die, they would pop it into another computer and try to pull files over, but it wouldn't allow them. Why? They weren't the owner and the SID was different between the two "Administrator" accounts. Now, you're seeing it more often for security. This is a step that is designed to help limit malicious attacks. This is a result of increased security.

I haven't had any problems with redirecting My Documents to a network location. I've been working with the Business edition which shouldn't make a difference though.

I believe problem 3 involves.. your lack of understanding of the OS. Not to be mean, but there is a learning curve. Once you understand how it works, I don't think it will be an issue. You may need to assign ownership to that folder/change security. I don't have the full process of what you did, but I'm certain its because you're missing a step in the process of working with Vista.

You're on Vista, not XP. Things don't work the exact same way. I admit its a headache, so I just disable all the UAC via the Local Security Policy and remove that headache from popping up.

thanks for the reply. i do admit there is a steeper learning curve in changing to vista from xp compare to win98 to xp n given that i'm only an average user, i only have basic understanding of it. n your suggestion for the confirmations works. thanks

For problem 3 , what i did was copy a shortcut into the <username> folder. When i wanted to delete that shortcut, windows wouldnt let me. Now, i've come to understand that there are folder with cant be deleted. However this usually doesn't apply to files created by the user.

I havent try copying other files into that folder so i'm not confirmed that other files wouldnt be automatically protected from deletion (too risky. if files really cant be deleted, then reformatting would be the final option). Still the best way to test this would be copying an .exe file into it to see if it's protected. if the file is protected, then it's a big problem. if not, it's just an annoyance. then i'll just have to avoid doing it next time.

There are many sites on the net that "cheat" the learning curve, like this one:
http://www.computerperformance.co. [...] tweaks.htm

hey.. that's a very good site for a newbie. thanks again