multiple users instead of dual boot

[j_lor]

Hello everyone!!!

I've got a couple of questions about what are the advantages and limitations of MULTIPLE USERS in XP.

What I am aiming for is one user-logon for internet, word processing, general stuff, games whatever.....and one user-logon purely for Music programs with soundcard only--disabled Modem, very few drivers loaded, no microsoft office,no internet, no fancy stuff .....just a very clean barebones setup. (Another way of acheiving this is to have a dual boot of course but a pain to keep changing)........

Is this user-logon setup (or part thereof) going to be possible with XP, and if so, how can it be done??

Many thanks in advance,

j_lor ##

 

[Rootz]

From what you say I assume you would like a clean setup user account with the OS as you installed and another to tryout software, browse the the internet and do all the *fancy* stuff.
You might also like these user accounts not to interfere with each other in case one of them runs into problems.
Sort of you install a bad multimedia codec that crashes Media Player on one side while having a perfect mint system state on the other user account...

LOL
Forget it! It's ONE operating system on ONE single machine.
The closest thing you can do to achieve something alike is to setup carefully WindowsXP with an Administrator User Account and then use the computer with a Normal User Account.
This can help not to mess up system integrity in your everyday use

 

[relder]

User profiles and hardware profiles are two different things. You cannot disable a modem in a user profile. Won't work. Hardware profiles are loaded before the desktop even comes up.

 

[Lactic.Acid]

What you CAN do though, is use as Rootz suggested, two accounts like you're talking. Which was your original proposal so that works out. What I would suggest though, is your "music" user is "guest" (you can go into User Accounts and enable the guest account, and set a password if you want).

The way you will go about "limiting" the account starts with cleaning out the Guest account's start menu and desktop. Then, if you're worrying about someone going in and manually running these programs, you can set NTFS rights and deny Guest Read and/or Write access to each program's folders. Don't want internet? Deny access to "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer". Office? progra~1\Microsoft Office. etc, etc. You can do this with user profiles as well, but I don't know if you want to go into that or not...but the option is there.

And if you're trying to lock this down, don't forget to disable "explore.exe" so the user can't hit the Windows Key + E combo. But they'll still have run...anyway, hope that helps.
/Lactic

 

[j_lor]

Hmmm, it looks like I can tune things a bit but not acheive what I really want.....Dual boot here we come!

Thanks for the advice guys.


j_lor

 

[jw50]

I'm not sure that a dual boot is going to do any more for you than Lactic.Acid's suggestions. If you are really that concerned about limiting hardware access just get a cheap second computer setup just for playing music.