You’ve finally done it. You installed ASTER multiseat to turn your beefy gaming rig into two separate workstations so your partner can work while you game—or maybe you're trying to save a fortune on hardware for your small office. It's a genius move. But then the panic sets in. You realize that while you have two monitors and two mice, you’re looking at the same desktop icons. You open a folder, and there are their private tax returns staring back at you.
Can you actually use ASTER multiseat and use separate documents for each person?
Yes. Honestly, it’s not even that hard, but the software itself doesn't "force" it on you by default. ASTER is essentially a layer that sits on top of Windows. It splits the hardware, but Windows still manages the "who sees what" part. If you’re both logged into the same Windows user account, you’re basically sharing a brain. You need to stop doing that.
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The "Same User" Trap
Most people setup ASTER and just hit "run." If your computer only has one user account (let's call it "Admin"), ASTER will happily log both workstations into "Admin."
This is bad for a few reasons. First, your browser tabs might start syncing weirdly. Second, if you both try to save a Word doc at the same time, you risk a shared cache collision. This can lead to data loss. I've seen it happen. You’re typing away, hit save, and suddenly the file is corrupted because the other workstation was trying to index the same folder.
The fix? Separate Windows User Accounts. Go to your Windows Settings, head to Accounts, and create a new local user for the second seat. It takes two minutes. Once you have "User A" and "User B," you can go into the ASTER Control Panel under the General Settings tab and assign each workplace its own login credentials. Now, when the PC boots, Seat 1 logs into User A and Seat 2 logs into User B.
How to Lock Down Your Folders
Even with two accounts, Windows sometimes leaves the "Public" folders or other drives wide open. If you really want to ensure privacy when using ASTER multiseat with separate documents, you have to play with NTFS permissions.
Kinda sounds technical? It's just right-clicking.
- Right-click the folder you want to hide (like your "Private Work" folder).
- Hit Properties, then the Security tab.
- Click Edit, then Add.
- Type the name of the other user and hit OK.
- Under the "Deny" column, check the "Full Control" box.
Boom. Even though they are sitting three feet away from you on the same CPU, they can't even open that folder. It’ll just give them an "Access Denied" error. This is the gold standard for office environments or shared homes where "Work A" shouldn't see "Personal B."
Shared Drives vs. Personal Spaces
There’s a balance here. Sometimes you want to share things. Maybe a folder of movies or a shared project.
I usually recommend keeping a dedicated partition—like a D: drive—for shared stuff. Use the C:\Users\YourName\Documents folder for the private things. Windows naturally protects these user-specific folders from other non-admin users. If you’ve made the second user a "Standard User" instead of an "Administrator," they won't be able to peek into your documents anyway.
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What About the Desktop?
If you see the same icons on both screens, it’s usually because those shortcuts are in the C:\Users\Public\Desktop folder. Many installers (like Steam or Chrome) dump their icons there so "everyone" can see them.
If you want a clean, separate look:
- Go to that Public Desktop folder.
- Cut the icons.
- Paste them specifically into
C:\Users\User A\Desktop. - Now they only show up for that specific person.
The "App Collision" Problem
A weird quirk of ASTER multiseat is that some programs aren't designed to run twice. Discord, for instance, hates being open in two places on one machine. To get around this, you might need to use the web version of an app on one seat and the desktop version on the other.
Also, watch out for browsers. If you use Chrome on both seats under the same Windows account, your history and passwords will be a mess. Separate Windows accounts solve 99% of this because each user gets their own AppData folder.
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Actionable Steps for a Clean Setup
To get your privacy sorted right now, follow this sequence:
- Create Local Accounts: Don't use a single "Home-PC" login. Make one for every person.
- Assign in ASTER: Open ASTER Control -> General Settings. Set the "Account" for each Place.
- Check the "sameuser0" Setting: In ASTER's special settings, you can actually prohibit the system from allowing the same user to log in twice. It’s a great safety net.
- Move Your Data: If you have sensitive docs on a secondary drive, use the "Security/Deny" trick mentioned above to lock out other users.
- Test the Sync: Open a document on Seat 1 and try to find it on Seat 2. If you can’t see it, you’ve done it right.
Setting this up properly takes about ten minutes of "boring" admin work, but it saves you a lifetime of awkwardness and potential file corruption. You get the power of one high-end PC with the privacy of two completely different machines.