The original post opined that he thought this had something to do with
account permissions. In a sense, that's true and it implies he has more
than one user account on his computer. If the application is installed in
one user account set up on his computer, it may not be accessible in another
user account on the same computer because the application may not have been
designed for a multi-user environment.
The change from limited to administrator account only applies to the ability
to install the application. Go to Control Panel, open User Accounts, it
will tell you what accounts are set up on your system and which accounts are
Administrator Accounts and which are Limited Accounts. Make note of the
account in which you are logged in and its designation, Limited or
Administrator. If you have more than one user account on your system and
the applications were installed in a different user account than the one to
which you log in and you need access to those applications and you are
having the problem specified, you then need to install those applications in
your account. If your account is a limited account, something you can find
out in the above mentioned area (Control Panel/User Accounts) then your
account must temporarily be changed to an Administrator account and it can
be done in this location under User Accounts. However, account type can
only be changed in an account that is designated Administrator so you would
have to reboot and log into an Administrator account if now already logged
on as such.
To answer your first question, "How does this happen?" it happens because
the application needs to be separately installed in any account in which it
is going to be used. There were numerous applications on the market when XP
was released, numerous applications already in the hands of consumers and
none of them had been designed with this type of environment in mind. As
new applications or versions replace those in the marketplace, this won't be
an issue but for now, users need to make this type of adjustment.
