Help, please.... User access to software in XP Home.

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Guest

I'm a fairly literate PC user, but have no experience of using XP yet.
(Still on Windows 98). However, a good friend of mine has had problems with
her XP Home PC and asked me to look at it.
The bottom line is that is was riddled with viruses, trojan horses and
spyware. After two days trying to clean it up via the very useful and
helpful Symantec site, and almost 99% there I encountered a few XP corruption
problems that I couldn't resolve.

I decided the best thing would be to reinstal XP completely and this worked
fine. However, when setting up my friends user account, I spelled the user
name slightly differently to the way it was originally set up.

I then had a 'bare desktop', when previously, all the icons and shortcuts
would have been there for her applications.

Anyway, I could see all the 'original' information under her 'old' user name
looking in the Documents and Settings directory, but couldn't access it.

The problem I encountered was setting up shortcut icons to her applications
on the desktop under the 'new' user name. Microsoft Office (and various
other apps.) was already installed on the PC, so I thought it would be a
simple process of pointing the shortcut to the location of the .exe file for
that application. However, having done that for Word, Excel, etc.... on
opening the application from the icon I set up, it gave an error message of
'this application is not available to this user, please run setup'. - I
couldn't find any logical way, (through help, or otherwise) to do this, so I
re-installed Office from CD and this worked. However, I still have the same
problem for other user accounts that need to be set up. I think I'm missing
the point, somewhere :) Can anybody boost my understanding of user accounts
and access to applications, please.....?
 
Please read your original post. IF you re-installed XP completely, you
re-formatted the Hard Drive, and thereby lost all her original stuff unless
you made external backups. ARE YOU SURE that you did not just run a repair
installation for XP?
 
I'm a fairly literate PC user, but have no experience of using XP yet.
(Still on Windows 98). However, a good friend of mine has had problems with
her XP Home PC and asked me to look at it.
The bottom line is that is was riddled with viruses, trojan horses and
spyware. After two days trying to clean it up via the very useful and
helpful Symantec site, and almost 99% there I encountered a few XP corruption
problems that I couldn't resolve.

I decided the best thing would be to reinstal XP completely and this worked
fine. However, when setting up my friends user account, I spelled the user
name slightly differently to the way it was originally set up.

I then had a 'bare desktop', when previously, all the icons and shortcuts
would have been there for her applications.

Anyway, I could see all the 'original' information under her 'old' user name
looking in the Documents and Settings directory, but couldn't access it.

The problem I encountered was setting up shortcut icons to her applications
on the desktop under the 'new' user name. Microsoft Office (and various
other apps.) was already installed on the PC, so I thought it would be a
simple process of pointing the shortcut to the location of the .exe file for
that application. However, having done that for Word, Excel, etc.... on
opening the application from the icon I set up, it gave an error message of
'this application is not available to this user, please run setup'. - I
couldn't find any logical way, (through help, or otherwise) to do this, so I
re-installed Office from CD and this worked. However, I still have the same
problem for other user accounts that need to be set up. I think I'm missing
the point, somewhere :) Can anybody boost my understanding of user accounts
and access to applications, please.....?
Click to expand...

It sounds like you ran a repair install of the existing XP or a parallel
install (two Windows folders on the same drive) instead of completely
reinstalling XP. "Completely reinstalling" means to me that everything on
the drive was abandoned and removed and a fresh new install was created.
You may want to look at your results a little closer to be sure what it is
that you did or didn't do. Either way, be sure to get critical security
updates installed as these are lost with either install method.

To regain access to the old folders and file, take ownership:
HOW TO: Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=308421
 
Gene

Thanks for your reply.

I originally ran the XP Repair option, which was unsuccessful, as it didn't
fix the corruptions. I then ran the New XP installation option which seems
to have gone straight over the old XP install.

This clearly didn't format the hard disk as all the previously available
software is still on the hard drive, although not available through XP
Desktop or Start Menus, but available via the application .exe within Program
Files and the respective application directory.

What I need to understand is how to add application software access to other
XP users of the PC who are not set up with administrative rights.
 
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