Sharon...pls don't leave!!
My daughter, me and a few other people, use this home
dell (xp). The darn system administrator just seemd to
pop on one day, and it has been hell eversince. No
downlaods, no defrag, no new softwear, no
nothing...........very frustrated in New Orleans !!
PLS HELP.............THANKS
Jnae, what do you mean it just popped on one day? The account exists from
day one on any new XP Pro or Home system. The folders for the account
aren't created until someone logs on to that account. In that respect, it
may *seem* to appear out of nowhere but it certainly exists before the
folders are created.
One gripe I have with systems that come with Windows preinstalled is that
this account is left unprotected - there is no password assigned to it.
While this is great for getting PC's out the factory door, the end user
winds up with a powerful and unprotected account on that machine. I think
it would be better if the little screens that appear when you first power
on the system 1) told folks about this account and 2) had them assign a
password to it.
Example: Mom and Dad think Junior has a limited account. In reality, he is
logging on with this built in account (without telling anyone) to get
around the limitations normally imposed by his Limited account.
Additional information and comments:
Only accounts in the administrator group (the built in account and any
added to the system besides this one) can install software. Limited account
are.. well, more limited in what they can and cannot do on the system.
Also, there are many settings in XP: group policy (pro only), local policy,
etc. Tweaking things in here without learning about them first could result
in locking yourself out of your own system.
There also has been a disturbing number of newsgroup posts lately about
sudden loss of access: no local access or denied access.
Some of the denied access situations are due to reinstalling - access can
be accomplished by taking ownership in these cases.
But the "no local access situations" where no one has played around with
security settings are the ones that bother me at the moment. Sounds like a
virus or trojan is currently in circulation and it is making some security
changes. Has anyone using this machine been tempted to download one of
those Paris Hilton emails? If yes, suspect damage done by a tainted
download.
"Tainted" is not an editorial comment on Paris Hilton. Popular titles like
this are a hacker's best friend. They count on the temptation factor
enticing users to download and double click. Bingo, besides watching a few
minutes of video (if this thing even ran) something "extra" has been
installed.
Anyhow... Need more details about your situation: "no downloads, no defrag,
no new softwear, no nothing"
What group do the various accounts belong to? What are the exact error
messages appearing when you attempt to perform particular tasks? Which
tasks go with which error messages? Can you think of anything unusual that
happened on the last day that the system worked correctly?
