I, of course, use Linux for most of my day-to-day computing, but Gill still likes to use Windows. This works fine. She runs Windows on a laptop and connects to the internet via a Linux gateway box on the home network.
Currently Gill's studying for a PhD. This involves lots or reading books and then condensing what she's read into notes that she writes in Word files. She's three months into the course and has about 2.5 Mb of data. Being more cautious than me, she's been asking me for some time to sort out a way to back up her data - she doesn't to have to retype all of those notes if anything happens to the laptop.
So, over the weekend, I installed Samba on one of the Linux boxes and set up a shared directory that she can see from the Windows box. Now, whenever she wants to backup her data she can just drag and drop the latest files into the backup directory.
Now, one of the things that I had to do was to switch on "profiles" on the Windows box[1]. This means that you know have to log on to Windows and every user that logs on gets their own desktop to configure to their liking.
I explain this to Gill and she goes off to try it all out whilst I start cooking. Thirty seconds later, there's a shout from upstairs, "Where have all my files gone?". I run upstairs to find that the PhD folder she had on her desktop is no longer there. I start to explore a few likely areas on the disk but to no avail. I start to panic slightly - whichh doesn't improve my problem resolution skills. I'm sure that I didn't delete anything, but maybe I did it by accident. This looks nasty.
Eventually, I work it out. As Gill is now logged on as herself, she sees her desktop, not the default user one that she saw before. Her files are still there, but on a different desktop. It's simply a case of finding where Windows has hidden the old desktop files and moving them to the new desktop directory. Everyone is happy. And the backup facilty works.
But I thought I was in serious trouble for a while there :-/
[1] Well, maybe I didn't have to do it, but it certainly seemed the simplest way to set up Samba.
