how well does a limited account work?

Lets say I have a little sister/brother who likes to get on the internet, and download freegames, but the game was actually infested with malware.. would it affect only their account, and not even touch mine, or other accounts?

 

a limited account only as access to limited files on it's account, but that would mean software couldn't be installed. it would have to run as an admin to install the software, so in that case it would have access to system files

Limited accounts are great once you have them setup, but not so good if you have to set the account up from the limited account.

 

In theory if I made a limited account, and that account got affected, it wouldnt touch my admin account.

 

I have to interject...

Having a limited account is supposed to prevent the installation of programs. But, it doesn't always work.

For instance, at the school I work, all of our students login with their own account which is severely limited. The cannot install programs that would be beneficial to their education, but they can install chat programs, games, tool bars, and tons of other garbage.

I am still baffled as to why this works, but it does. I can log on with even the Guest account and be able to download and install any chat program, tool bar, game, and tons of other junk I don't need to.

This is true for Windows 2000 Pro and XP Pro.

 

Having the limited account would prevent that user from having any access to the administrative files. Without special permissions or the password, users cannot access each others profile.

 

You can install applications in a limited user account as long as it doesn't try to make any system-wide changes. Any changes made within a limited user account affect only that account. If you're using XP Pro, you would want to go into gpedit.msc to specify group permissions, you could then specify file permissions by going into the properties for the drive or folder that you want to change.

The exception would be if you encountered some malware that is able to escalate it's own privileges.