What good are XP Pro User Accounts?

G

Guest

My daughter has a game, Sims 2, that requires her to run it from my admin
account. What good does it do to have Win XP Pro and require all users to
have admin rights to run the software you want?

Is it possible to create an account that allows my daughter to play this
game without gaining full system access? She's not old enough to know what
not to do.

Can I create an admin account that may not access the internet so she can
run the game without me worrying about her installing additional features, ie
trojans, viruses, and spyware? I can't rely on her to unplug eithernet, nor
block internet traffic. She does know how to turn it on, log in, and run her
game though.

We're running XP Pro, SP2, with EZ Firewall, EZ Antivirus, Roadrunner,
adaware, and spybot. (And we're still vulnerable).
 
J

JW

there are zillions of examples of programs that run fine in all accounts
and do not require Admin rights. software can be designed to run in all
accounts, or can be designed to run in only the Admin account. your
problem is with the Sims software, and not a problem with XP.

is it possible to create an account that allows her to play this game
without gaining full system access ? with NTFS permissions, you could
easily set up a new Admin account, and then set Deny on every privilege
on every folder for that specific account, except
Read/Execute/Write/Modify on the folder in which the game is installed.
use CyberPatrol to restrict her access to programs and the internet.

finally, there is No 100% guarantee of security, as long as you have an
internet connection. you are definitely safer with anti-virus,
anti-spyware, and firewall protection, but this is No 100% guarantee of
security for several reasons.

for example, anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall software, and especially
Internet Explorer, have been defeated by infections in the past (either
shut down or compromised for escalation of privileges). this is besides
the fact that anti-virus and anti-spyware development is reactive by
design (always reacting to new infections), and consequently you will
always be behind the timing of new infection development/release --
always vulnerable between the time new infections are
developed/released, and the time you finally get an update for your PC
protection (which might be hours or days).
 
J

JW

correction.

....you could easily set up a new Admin account, and then set Deny on
every privilege for that specific account on every folder, except
Read/Execute privilege on \Windows, and Read/Execute/Write/Modify
privilege on the folder in which the game is installed.
 
M

Malke

Kurt said:
My daughter has a game, Sims 2, that requires her to run it from my
admin
account. What good does it do to have Win XP Pro and require all
users to have admin rights to run the software you want?

Is it possible to create an account that allows my daughter to play
this
game without gaining full system access? She's not old enough to know
what not to do.

Can I create an admin account that may not access the internet so she
can run the game without me worrying about her installing additional
features, ie
trojans, viruses, and spyware? I can't rely on her to unplug
eithernet, nor
block internet traffic. She does know how to turn it on, log in, and
run her game though.

We're running XP Pro, SP2, with EZ Firewall, EZ Antivirus, Roadrunner,
adaware, and spybot. (And we're still vulnerable).

There is a patch for The Sims that will allow it to run in a Limited
account. Go to the game's website.

Malke
 
G

Guest

Hi kurt. had same problem with sim2 please goto the sims2 web site i think
its eagames.com they have a fix for your exact problem. you will have to
downlaod a patch to make the game work under all profiles hope this helps it
worked great for me. and you don't have to do anything to your user accounts
for it to work.
 
B

Bruce Chambers

Kurt said:
My daughter has a game, Sims 2, that requires her to run it from my admin
account. What good does it do to have Win XP Pro and require all users to
have admin rights to run the software you want?


Ask the makers of the game that hasn't been properly designed to run on
a multi-user OS.

Is it possible to create an account that allows my daughter to play this
game without gaining full system access? She's not old enough to know what
not to do.


This is quite common if the software was designed for Win9x/Me, or
if it was intended for WinNT/2K/XP, but was improperly designed. Quite
simply, the installation routine for this application doesn't "know"
how to handle individual user profiles, or the application tries to
make changes to "off-limits" sections of the registry. Quite often,
you can make this software available to other users by _copying_ the
Start Menu folder and Desktop folder shortcuts from the user profile
from which the software was installed in the corresponding folders in
the user profile(s) in which you'd like the software to be accessible.
If the application is something that can/should be made available to
all current and future users, copying the shortcuts into the
corresponding locations of the All Users profile will do the trick.

For some obscure reason, game developers in particular seem to not
understand WinXP's file security paradigm, and require even limited
users to have unnecessarily high privileges to protected systems
folders. For example, saved games are often stored in a sub-folder
under the game's folder within C:\Program Files - a place where no
inexperienced or limited user should have write permissions.

NOTE: This may not work if the software requires access to parts
of the hard drive and/or registry that are not normally accessible to
regular users. (This won't occur if the application was properly
written.) If this does prove to be the case, however, you're left
with two options: Either grant the necessary users appropriate higher
access privileges (either as Power Users or local administrators), or
replace the application with one that was properly designed
specifically for WinNT/2K/XP.

Some Programs Do Not Work If You Log On from Limited Account
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q307091

Additionally, here are a couple of tips suggested, in a reply to a
different post, by MS-MVP Kent W. England:

"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."

Can I create an admin account that may not access the internet so she can
run the game without me worrying about her installing additional features, ie
trojans, viruses, and spyware?


No, not really. An admin account is, by definition, "omnipotent." The
only limit to its "power" over everything on the computer is the
knowledge of the user.





--

Bruce Chambers

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both at once. - RAH
 

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