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Guest a/c in XP Pro & stopping others from accessing my personal files 2

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stephen1c

Technical User
Dec 31, 2004
64
GB
I want to let other people use my PC as well as myself and have set up a guest a/c in XP Pro, however I was shocked to find they could still access my files.

To log onto my own a/c it is password protected, however from the guest a/c you can still access folders which are private. Is there any easy way of stopping this

I also want to be able to stop people from installing applications and deleting Windows Files

Can anyone advise please

Thanks, Stephen
 
Is the guest account, really the account named "Guest"? And where are the files that can be seen by the guest account - are they inside your C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername? Lastly, is your hard drive formatted as NTFS or Fat32?
 
The guest a/c can be viewed in the 'User Accounts' folder and has 'Limited account' written under it. In the same folder, it also shows under 'guest' that 'Guest account is off'

I don't know how my hard drive is formatted
 
make sure ur filesystem is ntfs (open diskmgmt.msc and check filesystem)
make sure the account u created is member of user only
 
Disc management shows only a FAT32 system

How do I 'make sure the account u created is member of user only '?
 
The Fat32 filesystem does not allow access control permissions. To keep other users out of your portion of the filesystem, you'll need to convert to NTFS. If you choose to do this, make sure that you have a backup of all your important files, and carefully read the 'considerations' section here:
 
do like smah recommended

start/run/convert.exe c: /FS:NTFS "this will do the conversation 2 ntfs

start/run/lusrmgr.msc "choose users, right click the account in question, properties, member of, here u add user and delete all other members
 
Ran the process and it finished ok. When I go into the guest a/c and try to access the Adminstrator / my own user settings, it now says 'Access is denied' - Great!

My only problem now is I also want to be able to stop people from installing applications and deleting Windows Files. How can I do that?
 
The built-in guest account can not install software to (or delete from) any of the protected Windows areas. It should already behave the way you want.
 
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