Setting up guest account

[Steve]

Just turned on the Guest Account for the first time. When I switch to
this account, the desktop comes up with a bunch of misc blanked-out
icons which it will not allow me to delete. And there's a blizzard of
"Windows cannot open this file" messages - for shortcut links and for
..exe files including rundll32, issch, eullauncher, sttray, etc.

How do I clean this up and start the Guest acct with a blank desktop?

Thanks!


--

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life,
please press three.

....Alice Kahn

 

[Gordon]

Just turned on the Guest Account for the first time.

Well you shouldn't. It's a security risk.

From TechNet:

"The Guest account is intended for users who require temporary access to the
system. However, if this account is enabled, a security risk may exist
because an unauthorized user could gain anonymous access to the system
through this account."

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb418978(TechNet.10).aspx

So if you enabled Guest, disable it now and create a Standard/Limited
(Vista, XP Pro/XP Home) for your visitors. Call the new user account
something like "Visitor".



When I switch to

 

[Malke]

Well you shouldn't. It's a security risk.

From TechNet:

"The Guest account is intended for users who require temporary access to
the system. However, if this account is enabled, a security risk may exist
because an unauthorized user could gain anonymous access to the system
through this account."

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb418978(TechNet.10).aspx

So if you enabled Guest, disable it now and create a Standard/Limited
(Vista, XP Pro/XP Home) for your visitors. Call the new user account
something like "Visitor".

My goodness that sounds familiar.

To the OP - general instructions for setting up user accounts in Vista
follow. And no, you shouldn't use the Guest account.

You absolutely do not want to have only one user account. Like XP and all
other modern operating systems, Vista is a multi-user operating system with
built-in system accounts such as Administrator, Default, All Users, and
Guest. These accounts should be left alone as they are part of the
operating system structure.

You particularly don't want only one user account with administrative
privileges on Vista because the built-in Administrator account (normally
only used in emergencies) is disabled by default. If you're running as
Administrator for your daily work and that account gets corrupted, things
will be Difficult. It isn't impossible to activate the built-in
Administrator to rescue things, but it will require third-party tools and
working outside the operating system.

The user account that is for your daily work should be a Standard user, with
the extra administrative user (call it something like "CompAdmin" or "Tech"
or the like) only there for elevation purposes. After you create
"CompAdmin", log into it and change your regular user account to Standard.
Then log back into your regular account.

As mentioned above, if you want an account for friends/relations, make one
called "Visitor" or the like. It should be a Standard account.

Malke

 

[Gordon]

My goodness that sounds familiar.

Is that one of yours then? ;-)

 

[Malke]

Is that one of yours then? ;-)

Malke

 

[Steve]

Well you shouldn't. It's a security risk.
So if you enabled Guest, disable it now and create a Standard/Limited
(Vista, XP Pro/XP Home) for your visitors. Call the new user account
something like "Visitor".

Thanks Gordon. The only problem with creating another std acct is that
it then requires acct selection at every reboot. Is there any way to
set one of the accts as default, and maybe have it pause a few
seconds, then boot to the default acct?

Why doesn't MS simply eliminate the Guest Acct option?


--

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life,
please press three.

....Alice Kahn

 

[Steve]

The user account that is for your daily work should be a Standard user, with
the extra administrative user (call it something like "CompAdmin" or "Tech"
or the like) only there for elevation purposes.

Would I need to switch to the Admin acct in order to install new
software?

Is there a problem if I leave the daily acct as admin, and set up
another admin acct in case something goes wrong?


--

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life,
please press three.

....Alice Kahn

 

[Gordon]

Thanks Gordon. The only problem with creating another std acct is that
it then requires acct selection at every reboot. Is there any way to
set one of the accts as default, and maybe have it pause a few
seconds, then boot to the default acct?

Not that I'm aware of.

Why doesn't MS simply eliminate the Guest Acct option?

It's used in networking, primarily for peer-to-peer networks where there are
no passworded accounts set, mainly in the Home flavours of Windows.

 

[Gordon]

Would I need to switch to the Admin acct in order to install new
software?

No - you just get asked for the admin password. (Occasionally you might have
to right-click on the exe file and use run-as administrator...)

Is there a problem if I leave the daily acct as admin, and set up
another admin acct in case something goes wrong?

Not per se - it's just not particularly good practice....

 

[Guest]

You could rename the Administrator account (in Local Security Policy - Local
Policies - SecurityOptions - Accounts: Rename Administrator). To hack in one
needs a username and password. Not renaming Administrator allows hackers to
guess the username easily.

 

[Malke]

Thanks Gordon. The only problem with creating another std acct is that
it then requires acct selection at every reboot. Is there any way to
set one of the accts as default, and maybe have it pause a few
seconds, then boot to the default acct?

Why doesn't MS simply eliminate the Guest Acct option?

1. There isn't any way to have the Welcome Screen pause and then
automatically log on but you can set the computer to automatically log onto
your desired account. When you have visitors you can temporarily undo the
automatic logon.

Start Orb>Search box>type: netplwiz [enter]
Click on Continue (or supply an administrator's password) when prompted by
UAC

Uncheck the option "Users must enter a user name and password to use this
computer". Select a user account to automatically log on by clicking on the
desired account to highlight it and then hit OK. Enter the correct password
for that user account (if there is one) when prompted. Leave it blank if
there is no password (null).

2. I guess that Guest is used in some rare instances. All operating systems
with which I'm familiar have a Guest user account - Unix, Linux, OS X, XP,
Vista - and in all of those cases it's disabled by default.

Malke

 

[+Bob+]

2. I guess that Guest is used in some rare instances. All operating systems
with which I'm familiar have a Guest user account - Unix, Linux, OS X, XP,
Vista - and in all of those cases it's disabled by default.

The Guest account is used for some anonymous network access (i.e.
connecting by a share initially or without having any other
credentials).

 

[mazorj]

You could rename the Administrator account (in Local Security
Policy - Local Policies - SecurityOptions - Accounts: Rename
Administrator). To hack in one needs a username and password. Not
renaming Administrator allows hackers to guess the username easily.

If you do that does Vista automatically pick up on the change to
NewAdministratorName and give it the same rights and privileges as the
old uber-Administrator account? Or do you have to manually update all
those changes?