To be clear, I'm not asking can it be set or how to set it, I'm asking is it already set at all on a new copy of Windows. The ideal way to find this out would be to install a fresh copy of Windows on a VM and check, since most of everybody who can answer this question will already have it set ;-)
I need to know if I can depend on it always being there. (I understand that these can be unset, but if you know how to do that you know you're asking for trouble.)
3 Answers
No, it is not. The closest equivalents in Windows NT are %UserProfile% and %HomeDrive%%HomePath% (note that they may point to different locations – the profile is always local, while the home can point to a network share).
No.
The equivalent environment variables that are set are HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH.
There's also %LOCALAPPDATA% (never roaming) and %APPDATA% (can roam). You're not supposed to write to %UserProfile% directly, and you can't predict the relative path from %LOCALAPPDATA% to %APPDATA% (could be localized).
