System vs Limited Accounts

[Kevin]

Can someone help? I set up my computer with a system
admin account and limited accounts for my kids. Now
anytime they want to play a CD or DVD game they can only
run out of the admin account or "Run as" the admin. this
defeats the whole purpose of setting up their accounts
(sigh). Did I do something wrong? I have not tried to
load games under their accounts but running as the admin,
would this fix the problem?

 

[Colin Nash [MVP]]

Hi Kevin,

(Yes I admit just typed this answer out for someone else but I'm pasting it
for you too because it still applies to your questions which I *did* read in
full.)

Unfortunately some software is not very well written and doesn't handle
multiple user profiles very well.

One thing to try is go into C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\*your name*\DESKTOP
and/or C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\*your name*\START MENU\PROGRAMS and copy
the appopriate icons into the same folder under your daughter's name... or
even better, under "All Users".

If you put it under "All Users" don't be surprised if you see two copies
when you log in: you are seeing your original one, plus the one that "all
users" see. You can probably delete your own in this case, since you count
as one of "all users"

If you still have problems, you may need to temporary elevate your
daughter's account to an administrator, log in as her to perform the
installation and then demote her again.

Finally, some applications (especially some games) will only run as an
administrator. In this case you need to re-evaluate your need for the
software vs your attempts to control access to the system.

I hope this helps.

 

[Colin Nash [MVP]]

Umm replace the word "daughter" as appropriate


--
Colin Nash
Microsoft MVP
Windows Printing/Imaging/Hardware

 

[Roger Abell [MVP]]

As Colin indicated, some software is not well written for
systems that do have a security model.

One thing that can sometimes be the issue is that the
software wants write access to its installation folder
or to some temporary file(s) somewhere.
For the first of these, use of the following at a cmd prompt
cacls /t /e /g Users:C "C:\Program Files\Appdir"
(where you replace C:\Program Files\Appdir with the actual directory)
will grant all limited accounts change to the install directory
If this does not help, then it may be a temp file issue or a
registry permission issue, or even something hardcoded into
the application that insists on being the Administrator account
(but this is not very common).

Roger