Restricting Administrator Accounts

Factual Questions
1

hi there,
here’s the story. my sister has just got the sims deluxe for xmas. to my horror the game requires an administrator account to play. she currently has a limited account. there is absolutely no way she is having a full account unless i can heavily restrict that account without affecting any other admin account.

i want to, for example, to lock out right click on the dekstop ONLY in her account. i know how to do this through the registry, but this consequently locks it out in my account too. i also need to remove the control panel and block access to a load of folders and programs. basically all i want to her to be able to do is play the sims, and that is it! nothing else!

is there a way i can do this? perhaps a third party app of some kind? it must only affect her admin account.

thanks for any help and happy holidays!

al.

2

Are you certain that the game requires an Admin account to play, and not to simply install?

3

This is a good point. Try changing her account type to Administrator, install the game, then change it back to Limited.

4

M2MM’s suggestion is good. But it sounds like you want to implement a Policy anyway.

If you have a network at home, you might want to consider the differences between a local admin, a domain admin, and an enterprise admin.

If the game does require admin privs, you may be able to get round this by granting her the Full Control permission both to the file tree and the appropriate trees in the registry - use Regedt32 for this.

5

I’m assuming you have Windows XP as your OS.

Go to Start/Run. Type “gpedit.msc”. Press Enter.

It’s got loads of options in there to assign rights, etc. To achieve your specific goal you might have to spend some time in there to see if it is at all possible.

6

absolutely, its an outrage really. its a well known issue, and microsoft knows of this and blames the developers for not taking into account the xp user system. its something to do with the game requiring to write to sections of the hard disk that limited accounts prohibit. administrator rights are needed to play the game.

7

thanks for the info, but any options i change there will affect my account too. i need to be able to restrict ONLY her admin account.

8

I think you’re basically hosed unless you feel like sitting there watching her while she plays her game. The only other thing I can think of, and I’m not even sure it’s possible, is to set up a multiboot to two different installations of XP. Other than that, I don’t know.

9

problem solved!

found this great little app
http://www.1securitycenter.com/sc/
it lets you set restrictions to any user on your system, even other administrators. you can password the program so nobody can uninstall it or modify the settings.

i’ve basically disabled everthing in her account, but left the sims shortcut in the quick launch. so all she is able to do (or see) is log in and click that icon. great stuff! and my account it totally unaffected!