Help with LUA account in XP SP2 Home, please

[brjoon1021]

I am running a several month old install of XP Home. I did not know about limited user accounts and nothing about security in general when I installed.

Therefore I have a highly tuned, comfortable and customized Administrator account. A couple of days ago, I made that account a limited user (stripped it of Admin privileges) and made a new account and gave it ADmin privileges. The idea being that I would be safer surfing with the LUA and I could log into Admin to install programs and such...

The problem is that the setup that I had been using as Admin. became very slow and just weird when I tried to run it as LUA. Programs were slow to open, my 2.2 Ghz felt like a Pentium 200.

Of course, each and every program was installed as administrator before I did this account work outlined above. What went wrong ? What was going on? I would be happy to deal with the lethargy if I knew that it would go away eventually.

Also, I would like to have the LUA and the Admin to have the same settings and customizations. You know: start menu tweaking, desktop tweaking, mouse settings tweaking and all of that kind of thing. Is there a way to import those settings into a newly created account ?

Perhaps I am asking the wrong question. A better one may be: how can I surf using a safer account than Admininstrator WITH the settings and asthetics that I am used to ? Right now, I am back to using and having only one account on the machine, "Administrator".

Thanks,

B.

[WSFuser]

u can use microsoft tweakui for windows xp to copy ur account settings. as for the lethargy perhaps the programs dont run as well under LUA? im not sure, what u shouldve done was keep ur admin account then make the new account limited.

[SSK]

You could try to:
- set your original Admin account (now LUA account if I understood correctly) BACK to Admin.
- remove the new (Admin) account.
- make a new LUA account

You'll have to set the new LUA account to your wishes (maybe, as WSFuser said, MS TweakUI can copy settings; if not TuneUp Utilities 2006 can --> paid app).

What goes wrong (probably) is that most programs don't run well when installed from an Admin account, then ran with restricted rights on that same account

BTW: no guarantees from me this all will work, OK?

[tlu]

Originally Posted by SSK

Y

What goes wrong (probably) is that most programs don't run well when installed from an Admin account, then ran with restricted rights on that same account

Sorry, but that's simply not true. I've been using a restricted user account for many years, and I've had no more than a handful applications causing real trouble (and believe me: I've installed many of them!). Note: I'm not talking about system tools (that require admin rights, of course) or badly coded games ...

[tlu]

Originally Posted by brjoon1021

I am running a several month old install of XP Home. I did not know about limited user accounts and nothing about security in general when I installed.

Therefore I have a highly tuned, comfortable and customized Administrator account. A couple of days ago, I made that account a limited user (stripped it of Admin privileges) and made a new account and gave it ADmin privileges. The idea being that I would be safer surfing with the LUA and I could log into Admin to install programs and such...

The problem is that the setup that I had been using as Admin. became very slow and just weird when I tried to run it as LUA. Programs were slow to open, my 2.2 Ghz felt like a Pentium 200.

Of course, each and every program was installed as administrator before I did this account work outlined above. What went wrong ? What was going on? I would be happy to deal with the lethargy if I knew that it would go away eventually.

Also, I would like to have the LUA and the Admin to have the same settings and customizations. You know: start menu tweaking, desktop tweaking, mouse settings tweaking and all of that kind of thing. Is there a way to import those settings into a newly created account ?

Perhaps I am asking the wrong question. A better one may be: how can I surf using a safer account than Admininstrator WITH the settings and asthetics that I am used to ? Right now, I am back to using and having only one account on the machine, "Administrator".

Thanks,

B.

I'm not sure what went wrong. I suggest you follow the hints given here. One possibility is missing access rights to certain folders, so you have to adjust that. Unfortunately, on the Windows XP Home edition the security tab available on the Pro version is missing - you should add it using the tool FajoXP. A good overview about access rights for specific partitions/folders gives AccessEnum.
Last but not least I advise to read Aaron Margosis' Web Blog.

[SSK]

Originally Posted by tlu

Sorry, but that's simply not true. I've been using a restricted user account for many years, and I've had no more than a handful applications causing real trouble (and believe me: I've installed many of them!). Note: I'm not talking about system tools (that require admin rights, of course) or badly coded games ...

Originally Posted by tlu

One possibility is missing access rights to certain folders, so you have to adjust that.

OK, thats I've meant to say in my first post. I'm running LUA for over a year now, so I'm not completely new to this either