XP home: changing admin account to limited account

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Byrne
  • Start date Start date
J

John Byrne

On my Mom's computer I noted that all the accounts were
admin accounts. I thought it would be a good thing to
create a separate admin account and make all the other
accounts limited. I did this to my mom's account and all
her old Outlook Express e-mail disappeared. I had a
"cardiac event". Restoring the account to admin status
restored the e-mail. I assume this is some sort of
protection issue or may have been a side effect of the
"admin" account asking whether I wanted to hide all the
files and I said "yes".

Is there a way to do this right so the e-mail doesn't get
lost? (The fact that my mom's computer got infected with
netsky.y in the meantime only emphasizes the importance of
this getting done.)

Thanks,

John Byrne
 
Normally the profile of an account, that is, the folder in
Documents and Settings that has as a name the username
of the account the first time it was used, will have a grant
of Full Control to the account. It might be the situation
that your Mom's account has a grant to Administrators
group instead of directly to her account.
If this is so, then when you changed her account to limited
the account no longer had access to its profile, or parts of
it. In Home edition you could use a safe mode boot to then
look at the security permissions in the properties of the
profile's highest folder. If it does not list her account by
name, just add it and grant it full control. If she has used
the ability of the email program to relocate the storage of
here email files to a different place, outside of her profile,
locate that storage and do the same NTFS permissions check.
 
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