XP Home with Two Administrators - Aggravations

[Douglas Goodrich]

Having problems with Win XP Home Edition set up with two users, both are
Administrators.

My understanding is that Administrators should be able to view and work with
system folders, change Internet settings, etc. However, in my case one
account cannot do all the things the other can do. For example, the second
administrator cannot view unhidden system folders such as 'Program Files'
with Windows Explorer, and cannot access Internet Options from the IE
toolbar or Control Panel. She can install software, which seems really
strange since 'Program Files' is not available to her.

In addition, when the first administrator changes personal settings, they
often propagate to the other administrator's account (examples: desktop
properties such as monitor resolution, default browser, default email).

Are these conditions normal? If not, any suggestions for a fix?

Would it be better to have one admin account and two basic user accounts,
and use the admin account only for restricted or "global" changes?

Thanks in advance for any information that might help solve this.

 

[Steven L Umbach]

On a clean operating system with default settings both users should be able
to do exactly the same things. In your case what may be happening is the
user in question is a member of another group that has restrictions applied
to it via deny permissions. Check the group membership of the user and
administrator to see if both users have the same group membership. You can
also use the command net user username [using actual username] to see group
membership for a user. Enter cmd in the run box and select OK if you are not
sure how to open the command window. In XP Home you need to boot into Safe
Mode and logon as an administrator to examine folder NTFS permissions to see
if there are any permissions that may be causing the problem. The link below
explains more on this.

Steve

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308418

 

[DCG]

On a clean operating system with default settings both users should be able
to do exactly the same things. In your case what may be happening is the
user in question is a member of another group that has restrictions applied
to it via deny permissions. Check the group membership of the user and
administrator to see if both users have the same group membership. You can
also use the command net user username [using actual username] to see group
membership for a user. Enter cmd in the run box and select OK if you are not
sure how to open the command window. In XP Home you need to boot into Safe
Mode and logon as an administrator to examine folder NTFS permissions to see
if there are any permissions that may be causing the problem. The link below
explains more on this.

Steve

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308418

Having problems with Win XP Home Edition set up with two users, both are
Administrators.

My understanding is that Administrators should be able to view and work
with system folders, change Internet settings, etc. However, in my case
one account cannot do all the things the other can do. For example, the
second administrator cannot view unhidden system folders such as 'Program
Files' with Windows Explorer, and cannot access Internet Options from the
IE toolbar or Control Panel. She can install software, which seems really
strange since 'Program Files' is not available to her.

In addition, when the first administrator changes personal settings, they
often propagate to the other administrator's account (examples: desktop
properties such as monitor resolution, default browser, default email).

Are these conditions normal? If not, any suggestions for a fix?

Would it be better to have one admin account and two basic user accounts,
and use the admin account only for restricted or "global" changes?

Thanks in advance for any information that might help solve this.

Thanks for the help. The permissions were a bit messed up, and it seems
there were some other strange things going on. But both administrators
now have full access to folders and files. I found work-arounds for the
two other problems (administrator #2 couldn't change Internet Options,
and individual settings such as screen resolution propagate from one
user to the other), so things are much better now.