Restricted User settings.

I am trying to find out how to restrict user settings on my XP Professional.

I have three accounts, my admin, my son, and my gaming.

What I am trying to do is run all applications on both my son and my gaming account, with restrictions on any & all changes to PC operation.


I have found that my son or his friend download programs or whatever under my son account, then I have to clean it up and just like to avoid the hassle.

This way, if my son has to add any new games or programs, he can ask me.

Any suggestions, would be appreciated.

 

Go to start > control panel
Click user accounts
Click the user account you want to change
Click "change the account type"
Click "limited account"

This is from memory so it might be slightly varied.

By the way, this cannot be done from the account you are changing.

 

Download a free program called steadystate and you can restrict or hide a lot of settings. You can also control which features or programs appear in each account.

 

There's no need to download some third-party app to set per-user permissions in XP-Pro - the built-in group policy and security settings already provide an embarrassment of riches.

To start with, you'll want to be logged into the administrator's account (to get maximum flexibility and access to controls).

Microsoft provides a Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP Handbook that should give you some help in getting the per-user restrictions you want set up.

There's also a number of group-policy primers that might be useful, such as this one from theeldergeek.com.

 

steadystate is not some third-party app, it's from microsoft for exactly such cases, and does what group policies do as well, but with a nice and simple interface. steadystate even does more by providing features for internet-cafes (like, reboot sets back to where you saved last time, deleting all virii, etc).

and the handbook you link to, is actually the predessor (????) of that steadystate. the first version of steadystate was calles "Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit"

so, use steadystate, it's so much more easy, espencially on not only restricting what's allowed, but taking away those ui components completely, so that you don't even see what you should not access anyways.


Steadystate is possibly the most underused and leastknown tool from microsoft, while it is awesome (and awesome to be free). i use it in quite some installations, everyone's impressed by it it's a 0-support-needed-afterwards tool
the other most underused tool from microsoft is windows home server, but that's not free of course (but still it's WOW )

 

Thanks for replies, I have downloaded "steadystate" and will look into the program. I appreciate the article link, I had copied the article, but had not had a chance to read it. I looked into group policy, (GPO), working with Server 2003 at school and got me thinking about restriction on accounts, but under XP Professional, you can not assign GP to a group like you do in Server 2003. Thanks again, I really appreciate the replies.

 

The problem is that GP only applies on a domain, it's not a server 2003 vs XP Pro issue.

 

Fair enough. Still, despite my loose-handed use of terminology, that's more or less what I meant - user accounts can be controlled with a high degree of precision using just the tools already available (or readily available) from MS itself.