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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T21:48:00+00:00

I’m creating a new shorcut within and update of my program on the Start

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I’m creating a new shorcut within and update of my program on the Start Menu
I worked getting the Special Environment variable ALLUSERSPROFILE and it worked for me under XP, it returns the right path, when using it under vista ir returns c:\ProgramData which is useless. Reading the Environment variable StartMenu is also pointless it returns empty string. ( On vista it lies under Windows\Start Menu, in english ,and if the install folder Windows has the default name)
Does anyone has an Idea how to get the startmenu directory for the ‘All Users”.
and would it be a generic solution that works under XP and Vista?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You want CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU. This doesn’t appear to be defined in the Environment.SpecialFolders enumeration, but you can use the Win32 API via P/Invoke:

    [DllImport("shell32.dll")]
static extern bool SHGetSpecialFolderPath(IntPtr hwndOwner,
   [Out] StringBuilder lpszPath, int nFolder, bool fCreate);

int CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU = 0x16;
StringBuilder path = new StringBuilder(260);
SHGetSpecialFolderPath(IntPtr.Zero, path, CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU, false);

    CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU
    (FOLDERID_CommonStartMenu)
    The file system directory that contains the programs and folders that
    appear on the Start menu for all
    users. A typical path is C:\Documents
    and Settings\All Users\Start Menu.
    Valid only for Windows NT systems.

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