Effective permissions suddenly admin for limited users

[Fred]

The oddest thing just started happening.

I have 3 limited users running on my XP SP3 box. These users are members of
the Users group only.

All of a sudden, all of the users are now like administrators with full
access to everything including the other limited users' private directories.
Looking at the "Effective Permissions" on any of these supposedly hidden
directories gives ALL of the permissions. The users can even write to the
"\Program Files" and "\WINDOWS" directories; obviously a catastrophic state
if security is at all important.

I have no idea what to do about this. Can this be a virus? Is there
something in some hidden group policy or other tweak that will restore these
users back to being unable to access other directories?

These users can also see and write to all areas of the registry too.

I am worried that this is the result of some sort of bug in a Microsoft
update, since how else but the O/S allowing this access at the NT level could
this occur?

Any advice most gratefully accepted.

TIA.

 

[Old Rookie]

Sounds like they are in the administrators group or a group that is the
local administrators group. Try running the command net localgroup
administrators to see if it shows expected membership.


Steve

 

[Fred]

Sounds like they are in the administrators group or a group that is the
local administrators group. Try running the command net localgroup
administrators to see if it shows expected membership.

Thanks for that suggestion. I am not at the machine right now, so I will
need to try this in the evening. I wonder about this though, since when I
checked "computer management"->users/groups, I did not see any weird
memberships. Would this show something different?

Thanks again.