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Category: Pain Free Computing Surfing With Windows XP Using Limited User Rights
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Sep 27, 2009 at 05:27 AM by CaptainPC
Experts tell us that the safest way to surf the internet and use e-mail is to do so with a limited user account, which is a user profile that excludes administrative rights. A limited user account allows the user to run software on the computer and change his/her user password, and little else. The limited user account will not allow system wide changes, installation or removal of software and/or hardware. This is the reason you would create a limited user account for your children to sign in on your computer. Your children, or anyone else with access to your computer, would not be able to accidently delete anything or make other changes to the system if you assign them a limited user account. If they wanted some new software installed you would have to log on with your password as administrator to do so. Windows XP by default sets up an administrator account when Windows is installed on the hard drive. When you as the owner of a PC power up your computer, you are the administrator of your computer. This gives you the rights you need to install/uninstall software programs, install/uninstall hardware, and create other user accounts, change passwords, etc.etc. Your only limitation in making any changes on your new computer is whether or not you understand how to make the changes you desire. However, anyone with the ability to log on your computer with your password will have the same administrator rights that you have. Furthermore, when you fire up your favorite web browser or e-mail client, any malware that gains an entrance to you computer while you are online will have the same administrator rights that you enjoy, which means it can execute code or send e-mail to everyone in your address book. Therefore, it would seem a simple matter to just create a limited user account for everyday computing, and reserve your administrator account for must have situations. However, it is very impractical for a home user to run a limited account, due to the necessity of logging out and back in as administrator every time something needs to be changed in the system. The limited user account would be discarded in short order, and logging in as administrator would quickly become the norm. Because of this, a Microsoft employee came up with a little program named “Drop My Rights”, which enables an administrator to run a web browser and an e-mail client with “limited rights”. Windows Vista provides the User Account Control for similar functionality. “Drop My Rights” can be downloaded using the following link: DropMyRights.msi To install follow these directions: 1. Locate the downloaded file “DropMyRights.msi” and double click it to start the install. Accept the EULA and click "Next". 2. When asked the location of the installation folder, cut and paste the following line into the box and then click "Next" and then "Close." C:\Program Files\DropMyRights 3. Right click on your Desktop and select New - Shortcut. 4. In the first screen of the shortcut wizard, cut and paste one of the following lines into the blank box headed "Type the location of the item:" Cut and paste the following line (including quotation marks) if you use Firefox as your browser: "C:\Program Files\DropMyRights\DropMyRights.exe" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" Cut and paste the following line (including quotation marks) if you use Internet Explorer as your browser: "C:\Program Files\DropMyRights\DropMyRights.exe" "C:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe" 5. Click "Next" and enter an appropriate name for your shortcut for example "Firefox Limited User" or "Limited User Internet Explorer" and then click "Finish." If the shortcut doesn't work when you double click, then it's possible your browser is not installed in the default location. If so, edit the shortcut settings to point to your browser’s correct location. To use “Drop My Rights” with your e-mail program, follow the same procedure, but type the location of your e-mail client rather than your web browser. Be sure to put your old shortcuts in a folder on your desktop so you can use them when you need to start your browser and e-mail client with administrator rights. I use “Drop My Rights” on my web browsers, and when I tried to update Adobe Flash player in Firefox, I was unable to do so until I closed Firefox and restarted using my old shortcut. Any comments? If you already use “Drop My Rights”, please share with us any experiences you’ve had online.
About this article APA Style Citation CaptainPC. (Sep 27, 2009). Surfing With Windows XP Using Limited User Rights. Retrieved Monday, Sep 06, 2010, from http://allnurses-central.com/showthread.php?t=426961
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