limiting access on a user on Win XP Pro

OK I'm looking for an inexpensive to limit access, to guest account or similar. i only want them to be able to use office, FireFox (limited access), no installations, and one folder where they can put downloaded stuff. They can't view or access any other drives or programs. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP3.

please let me know what u suggest.

 

You can use the "Sharing and security" option in XP to prevent access to any drives or folders you want by:

Selecting the drive or folder, right-clicking, adding the username in question to the list, and selecting the "deny" box for all the options in the list.

Then you can right-click on "my computer" and choose "manage", then go to the user accounts area, and select the username in question, right click on it, and choose properties. Then you can go to the "profile" tab, and select "connect [drive letter] to [path]" to make a "drive" appear in "My Computer" to provide a downloads area.

With the above option, make sure you set the permissions for the location you selected above to "allow" read & write, and make sure permissions are not inherited.

As for the programs the user is allowed to use, all I can suggest is hunting around the [root drive]\Documents and Settings\[username]\ area and the "all users" and "default users" ares in the same place to find and delete all program shortcuts you don't want the person to have access to.

NOTE: if you delete shortcuts from "all users" and "default user" then they will be deleted from ALL user accounts. I sugguest you copy them from this area to all user accounts you want to remain unaffected.

Hope this helps,

 

I believe to get the Security tab you have to disable Simple File Sharing.

In My Computer>Tools>Folder Options>View tab>scroll down to last on list, untick the box "Use Simple File Sharing".

 

Hello There,

If you go to control panel > user accounts, you can limit any computer accounts there to restrict use on the computer.

hope this helps

 

You also need an NTFS, rather than FAT, filesystem. (Look at the drive's properties dialog box.) When upgrading from earlier operating systems, people sometimes keep the older filesystem, which limits sharing and security options. FAT systems have trouble keeping people out of areas on the disk, so people can still get to files, and find programs they aren't supposed to access. If you have a FAT filesystem, many sharing and security options will be greyed or not shown. You can convert FAT to NTFS if necessary.