Limited User Accounts on XP Home

[sullivanmar 0]

Hi,

 

I'm running XP Home and have set up limited user accounts for others in the household. Given many prior rebuilds/repairs needed by allowing access to admin privs, I do not want to turn on privs for these accounts.

 

However, many games appear to require these privs to run. To be specific, the one I am currently wrestling with is Need For Speed - Porsche Unleashed.

 

I have tried installing the the shared documents directory but NFSPU seems to still want to access other files/directories somewhere else (vague error message about an access violation)

 

Has anyone been able to get a configuration like this to work on this or another game with a similar problem? Any insights appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Admiral LSD 0]

The only real way around it is to run the game with Admin priveliges (NFS3 has this same problem). Starting with 2000 (at least, AFAIK, I didn't notice it in NT4 but that doesn't mean it wasn't there), Microsoft provide a service called Run As which allows you to run program with higher priveliges than your current user account. The kludge is that you have to enter the Admin password whenever you want to run the program (I really hate the way M$ implement something that could be genuinely useful but screw it up by only implementing it halfway).

 

To enable it, bring up the shortcuts property sheet and under the "Shortcut" tab will be a button marked "Advanced." Click that and one of the options will be "Run with different credentials." check that and click OK and then OK again to close the property sheet. Now, whenever you execute the shortcut you'll be prompted to either run the program under your current user account or run it as another user (by default it pick Administrator but it could just as easily be any other user account).

[Jerry Atrik 0]

does xp home have "power user" settings?

[sullivanmar 0]

No, XP Home does not have Power User settings. It does temp me to make the leap and upgrade this system to XP Pro. But it is a system for family/kid use and Home currently fits the bill.

 

As for setting it up to "Run As", I agree the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. I don't see the sense in doing this as it requires everyone to know the Admin password. Kinda defeats the purpose.

 

BTW, I have been able to get NFSIII to run ok for limited users. I installed it into a folder that had the file prives changed to allow all users to read/write. This worked for NFSIII but not for Porsche Unleashed. The latter seems to be wanting to read/write to some other files/folders somewhere else, but doesn't make it clear which ones.

 

Thanks.