Airman said:
After running Belarc Advisor, it informs me that someone has
logged in as guest on my computer some two hours before I
got to work this morning.
Since the guest account is disabled, and I am the only user
of this box, password protected, I assume it's a mistake.
But then where is Belarc coming up with this erroneous info?
Do you have any folders or printers on this computer that are
shared over the network? If you do then Belarc may be noting
access to one of those items. XP Home uses what's called Simple
File Sharing to allow access to shared resources. Simple File
Sharing authenticates network users by using the Guest account.
On your PC, the Guest account is off, but it's not disabled.
That simply means you can't sit down at the keyboard and logon
as Guest. Check to see if someone who has permission to shared
resources on your system tried to access them this morning.
Here's an article that provides more details on this subject:
How to configure file sharing in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;304040
Quoting from the article: "Remote users always authenticate as
the Guest account." and "
If you turn off the Guest account in the User Accounts Control
Panel tool, only the guest's ability to log on locally is
affected. The account is not disabled."
If this access was not attempted by a user on your local LAN
then you might want to start running a firewall program that
prohibits access from beyond your local network. If you're not
sharing any resources on your system, you might want to
consider disabling File and Printer sharing altogether. It
wouldn't hurt to take a look in the Security section of Event
viewer and see when the Guest account is listed in the
Logon/Logoff category. Right click the event and select
Properties. Look for Logon Type: 3 which indicates access from
the network.
Nepatsfan
