problem changing account privileges

[Gary L. Drescher]

I have a user account with administrator privileges that I want to change to
a limited account (XP Pro, all updates installed). But when I make that
change, XP creates a completely new user profile for the account (if the old
profile was xyz, the new one is xyz.PCname). So the next time I log in to
the account, I don't see any of my documents and settings.

I suppose I could try copying everything from the old profile to the new
profile, but that seems laborious and error-prone. Instead, I used regedit
to point
MyComputer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Pr
ofileList\xyz\ProfileImagePath back to the original settings. Then I see my
settings and documents properly when I log in, but I'm back to having
adminsitrator privileges.

How can I remove administrator privileges from my account and still keep my
documents and settings?

 

[John Sculati]

You might want to try first creating a new adminstrator account and then
changing your existing administrator account to a limited user account.

 

[Gary L. Drescher]

I did that to begin with--otherwise XP wouldn't let me revoke the earlier
administrative privileges in the first place.

 

[Gary L. Drescher]

Problem solved. When the account in question was created by copying
documents and settings transferred from another computer, the destination
account was never given permissions for the associated profile files or
registry keys. Adding that account (with full control) to both the profile
files and the registry keys fixed everything.

 

[Gary L. Drescher]

Problem solved. When the account in question was created by copying
documents and settings transferred from another computer, the destination
account was never given permissions for the associated profile files or
registry keys. Adding that account (with full control) to both the profile
files and the registry keys fixed everything.