WinXP Home - Program Permissions/Access

[Beemer]

I have a computer here from a friend at work. Brand new Compaq Presario S6500NX. The kids wanted Internet, "NOW" so they loaded the time limited, free AOL that came with the package.

Don't worry. I told them all about it.

They were doing this only as a temporary measure to appease the kids. Well. We all know that removing AOL from an operating system 99% of the time has detrimental affects. Told them I will have to help them out and reinstall the O/S back to factory. No personal data on the system as of yet, anyway. I always reinstall the O/S of an OEM computer as a rule of thumb if brand new.

Here it is. They want separate profiles of all family members.

I created an Administrator account and 4 Limited accounts.
I have configured all utilities to be used. Zone Alarm 4, SpyBot, Norton AV by logging into the Admin account and then Limited accounts for initialization of programs necessitating the initialization and/or configuration.

These folks are novices and I don't know if that will change. I can't have the woman, (who is goin to minimally administer the machine going into the registry to set permissions after every install of a program on all the accounts!

1.) How can I give permission for example to allow a limited account to update Norton from within the limited account constraints?

2.) How can I allow the installation of programs when logged into a limited account?

3.) Do all users have to be Admins? what a piece of crap this Home Edition is!

Cheers!

[Beemer]

I think I have found a workaround for this problem.

Log in as Admin and change the account type for the Limited user to Aministrator.

Log into that users account.

Apply changes/installs as necessary.

Log out of user and into original Admin and reset the Limited user account type for that user.

Should be fun to teach this to a novice.

Cheers!

[Gait_Keeper]

you'll be ok

[Beemer]

I'll need another long weekend to recover from this machine.

I'm now in the process of hacking the registry to reflect the new user common folders in the alternate partitions I have created on all profiles. (My Music, My Pictures, My Received Files, My Videos, personal directory default Save location, and a big etc...)

I'll post my service write-up when I'm finished. I charged $100.00 for this one. Should have charged more as it's taking a lot of time to complete the total customisation of 6 profiles including removing all the fluff on all profiles. (yup! Had another profile added.)

Plus. I'm cooking the ham and making the pumpkin pies. (Scatch pies....yum....)

Cheers!

[Beemer]

And I just had another puter dropped off that I have to find proof of no dialler set to dial some place called SAO TOME. He received a phone bill of $147.92. Two calls with the phone number of 281048 generated this bill. The phone company is saying the computer probably made the calls. We'll see. If I can't find a dialler or any kind of trojan on the machine, I'll know how to instruct the guy on how to fight the phone company.

Cheers!

[Gait_Keeper]

Good man Beemer, i don't eat pork, but you can send some pie down the pipe

make sure you instruct himon clicking pop-ups on seedy web sites, even not so seedy web sites.

I did something simialr on my moms XP home machine, it's on my network, she lives downstairs, didn't go to the registry, she set it up her self, a Dell, and made everyone administrators, made myself the the only admin, and gave her lots of rights, and lectures

[Beemer]

I take it she is on Win XP Pro then?

Cheers!

[Gait_Keeper]

Home, I have Pro, maybe the rights she has aren't as detailed as what you're doing but hey it works