Second try: Guest account and power profile question

[Jeff Barnett]

I posted the message, repeated below, several days ago. Either it didn't
become visible to the group in general or no one had anything to say. If
you do know something helpful please respond. If you have a good pointer
that describes XP's power management scheme and its integration into the
user interface, I'd appreciate a pointer.

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

"I occasionally have a visitor that I allow to use one of our computers.
I created Guest accounts for his use. I recently noticed that if he is
the last one to use one of the computers that it will not enter a
suspend state. I checked the power profile for the Guest user, set what
I wanted, clicked okay, and got something like a not authorized message.

Any way to fix power settings for the Guest account? I know I could ask
this user to log out then select suspend from the Welcome Screen. If I
could trust him to do that faithfully, I probably would have given him a
regular account."

Jeff Barnett

 

[me]

I posted the message, repeated below, several days ago. Either it didn't
become visible to the group in general or no one had anything to say. If
you do know something helpful please respond. If you have a good pointer
that describes XP's power management scheme and its integration into the
user interface, I'd appreciate a pointer.

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

"I occasionally have a visitor that I allow to use one of our computers.
I created Guest accounts for his use. I recently noticed that if he is
the last one to use one of the computers that it will not enter a
suspend state. I checked the power profile for the Guest user, set what
I wanted, clicked okay, and got something like a not authorized message.

Any way to fix power settings for the Guest account? I know I could ask
this user to log out then select suspend from the Welcome Screen. If I
could trust him to do that faithfully, I probably would have given him a
regular account."

Jeff Barnett

Try this:
1) from the admin account give the guest account admin privleges.
2) Loginto the Guest Account and set the power settings to your prefered
configuration.
3) Log into the admin account and restore the original priveleges to the
guest account.

 

[Jeff Barnett]

me wrote, On 6/11/2013 7:10 AM:

Try this:
1) from the admin account give the guest account admin privleges.
2) Loginto the Guest Account and set the power settings to your prefered
configuration.
3) Log into the admin account and restore the original priveleges to the
guest account.

Thanks for responding.

I considered what you are suggesting. However, the Guest account is
created by XP with all sorts of special restrictions. I would need some
guarantee that when I switched back that everything would really switch
back. I fished around for some more information on Guest accounts and
have found nothing useful. In fact they seem to have not been thought
out by Microsoft and/or most software and hardware vendors. For example,
you cannot customize a Logitech mouse in a guest account; APC software
that controls shutdown doesn't provide an interface to the guest account
meaning the auto hibernate isn't armed properly in the Guest account;
Intel thermal and power monitoring (or motherboard, CPU, etc.) doesn't
work when the Guest account is active. In other words, it seems to be an
afterthought. The only reason I use it is because a friend I trust as a
human but not as a computer user needs access.

Jeff Barnett

 

[me]

me wrote, On 6/11/2013 7:10 AM:
Thanks for responding.

I considered what you are suggesting. However, the Guest account is
created by XP with all sorts of special restrictions. I would need
some guarantee that when I switched back that everything would really
switch back. I fished around for some more information on Guest
accounts and have found nothing useful. In fact they seem to have not
been thought out by Microsoft and/or most software and hardware
vendors. For example, you cannot customize a Logitech mouse in a guest
account; APC software that controls shutdown doesn't provide an
interface to the guest account meaning the auto hibernate isn't armed
properly in the Guest account; Intel thermal and power monitoring (or
motherboard, CPU, etc.) doesn't work when the Guest account is active.
In other words, it seems to be an afterthought. The only reason I use
it is because a friend I trust as a human but not as a computer user
needs access.

Jeff Barnett

NP... i've been thru the same thing myself before. I have several
systems and that is how the one i share is set up.
What i normally do is disable the built-in guest account, and create a
standard user account for guests/friends. First thing i do after that is
config the power settings (as per the instructions i provided). i usually
do that thru the computer management - local user and groups panel. also
a few other tweaks to lock it down abit more.. i.e. restricting access to
certain folders and things.
And as for the monitoring programs.. you could change the restrictions
on them to allow standard users accounts to be able to run them.. but
that wouldn't be something i recommend.