C
couglas
Hello,
Several weeks ago I made a number of moves to make my XP more secure.
One thing I'd heard over and over was to do everyday work in a
non-administrator account. So I went to switch over my sole account
"Bob" to a limited user. But I still wanted the automatic login on
startup, so I messed around with "control userpasswords2" in XP Home.
Bad idea, I've realized since. Startup into Bob does work now, but if
I want to change anything I'm out of luck. E.g., if I want to change
it back to a full administrator account. The reason being that, when
I'm logged in as Administrator (or the admin2 account, also an
administrator), the Bob account does not show up anywhere. Yet if I
try to create an account "Bob" it tells me that it already exists!
I've seriously thought about changing Bob back to administrative, since
I've taken a number of precautions against malware (behind a router,
Windows is updated, using Opera, very selective with downloads), but I
can't.
Some problems I'm experiencing since the switchover:
1. When I log out of Bob and log in as Admin2 to do something, then
log back out and come back as Bob, there is s System process using 100%
CPU, rendering the computer unusable without a restart.
2. When I try to customize my Start Menu as Bob, XP tells me that
modifications with affect all users on the computer. I tell it Yes, to
go ahead, but it does nothing. I can't even move programs around on
the Start menu
There are some others that I can't think of right now. Overall, the
headache of installing everything as Admin2 and dealing with all this
stuff seems to have taken far more time than cleanup of most spyware
would take. Any ideas on how my main account can get back to an
administrative one? Thanks?
Several weeks ago I made a number of moves to make my XP more secure.
One thing I'd heard over and over was to do everyday work in a
non-administrator account. So I went to switch over my sole account
"Bob" to a limited user. But I still wanted the automatic login on
startup, so I messed around with "control userpasswords2" in XP Home.
Bad idea, I've realized since. Startup into Bob does work now, but if
I want to change anything I'm out of luck. E.g., if I want to change
it back to a full administrator account. The reason being that, when
I'm logged in as Administrator (or the admin2 account, also an
administrator), the Bob account does not show up anywhere. Yet if I
try to create an account "Bob" it tells me that it already exists!
I've seriously thought about changing Bob back to administrative, since
I've taken a number of precautions against malware (behind a router,
Windows is updated, using Opera, very selective with downloads), but I
can't.
Some problems I'm experiencing since the switchover:
1. When I log out of Bob and log in as Admin2 to do something, then
log back out and come back as Bob, there is s System process using 100%
CPU, rendering the computer unusable without a restart.
2. When I try to customize my Start Menu as Bob, XP tells me that
modifications with affect all users on the computer. I tell it Yes, to
go ahead, but it does nothing. I can't even move programs around on
the Start menu
There are some others that I can't think of right now. Overall, the
headache of installing everything as Admin2 and dealing with all this
stuff seems to have taken far more time than cleanup of most spyware
would take. Any ideas on how my main account can get back to an
administrative one? Thanks?