said by dave:The "all programs" entry on the Start Menu basically opens a mini-Explorer that shows you the content of \Program Files(which may or may not really be 'all programs').
Absolutely not. Nothing in the default start menu has anything whatsoever to do with the "Program Files" folders.
On Windows 7 all it does is open a combined view of the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu, C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu and C:\Users\Common\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu.
On previous versions it show a combined view of the C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Start Menu and C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu.
When an app asks whether to create a start menu entry or not, it asks whether you want shortcuts created in one of those locations. When the app asks whether it should be installed only for the user logged on or for "All Users" it asks which one of those specific folders the shortcuts will be created in. If you install the app only for the specific logged on user it'll install the shortcuts in the folder that has %username% in it. If you install for all users it'll create the shortcuts in the "Common" or "All Users" folder, depending on the version of Windows.