Hiding User Account at Log On

O

Okieboy

One of kids' educational software will only run with
administrator privileges under WinXP. Kids accounts are
set as limited users. Program works fine under limited
account if "Run as...<administrator>" is used. I don't
want kids to know the admin password.

So was thinking of setting up another admin account,
called GAMES. They could run the program using this
admin account using the "Run as..." feature under their
limited account. However I do not want the new admin
account GAMES to be available to them upon start-up.

Kids have two separate accounts on PC, so need the logon
screen to display their user names, plus my passwaord
protected admin account, but not the admin account
established only to run the programs.

Any helpful suggestions appreciated.
 
K

Kent W. England [MVP]

If your game or application works with admin accounts, but not with
limited accounts, you can fix it to allow limited users to access the
program files folder with "change" capability rather than "read" which
is the default.

C:\>cacls "Program Files\appfolder" /e /t /p users:c

where "appfolder" is the folder where the application is installed.

If you wish to undo these changes, then run

C:\>cacls "Program Files\appfolder" /e /t /p users:r

If you still have a problem with running the program or saving settings
on limited accounts, you may need to change permissions on the registry
keys. Run regedit.exe and go to HKLM\Software\vendor\app, where
"vendor\app" is the key that the software vendor used for your specific
program. Change the permissions on this key to allow Users full control.
 
O

Okieboy

Thanx. The specific error message when running the
program under limited account states that a specific
program file is unable to copy to the WINNT directory.
Would fix below address that?

Okieboy
 
K

Kent W. England [MVP]

No, it wouldn't. One thing that sometimes works is to install and run
the program from an account that is a computer administrator and then
switch it to limited and rerun the application and see if it can run now
that it has created keys and files where it wants.
 

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