Re: New Vista user - could use some help.

Malke wrote:
John O'Boyle wrote:

I recently purchased a new Gateway notebook for my wife. It arrived
with Vista Home Premium installed. My first thought was to wipe the
drive and install Windows XP Professional. However, after discovering
that several of the important drivers were unavailable for Windows XP, I
decided to bite the bullet and live with Vista.

I did what I could to make the Vista installation appear as much like
Windows XP as possible. Every time there was a "classic" option, I took
it. I became extremely frustrated with, what I think is, User Account
Control, in that I couldn't seem to do much of anything without
explicitly giving the system permission.

In my frustration, I added one more of the tweaks found at the link
below. And no, I'm not sure which ones I applied and which ones I
didn't. I find myself in a position now where I don't believe there's
an administrator account at all. My wife's account, which really should
be also an administrator account, shows as "standard". When I go to try
and change it to administrator, nothing happens, and the change doesn't
take.

Restore your wife's computer to factory condition with whatever method
Gateway provided. Then either take the machine to a local tech who knows
what s/he is doing or stop tinkering. You are losing a lot of functionality
by trying to make Vista into something it is not. Buying a good beginner's
Vista book will also be a good idea. I highly recommend "Vista: The Missing
Manual" by David Pogue. I'm not saying this to hurt your feelings, but
you're just making things far more difficult and frustrating than they need
to be.

Your wife's user account should be a Standard user account. Here is the
general information about setting up user accounts in Vista:

You absolutely do not want to have only one user account. Like XP and all
other modern operating systems, Vista is a multi-user operating system with
built-in system accounts such as Administrator, Default, All Users, and
Guest. These accounts should be left alone as they are part of the
operating system structure.

You particularly don't want only one user account with administrative
privileges on Vista because the built-in Administrator account (normally
only used in emergencies) is disabled by default. If you're running as
Administrator for your daily work and that account gets corrupted, things
will be Difficult. It isn't impossible to activate the built-in
Administrator to rescue things, but it will require third-party tools and
working outside the operating system.

The user account that is for your daily work should be a Standard user, with
the extra administrative user (call it something like "CompAdmin" or "Tech"
or the like) only there for elevation purposes. After you create
"CompAdmin", log into it and change your regular user account to Standard.
Then log back into your regular account.

If you want to go directly to the Desktop and skip the Welcome Screen with
the icons of user accounts, you can do this the same way as in XP:

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

Malke


Perhaps I might be able to hear form someone with a less narrow minded viewpoint. I'm far from a novice and have a fairly grounded idea of what I want!

JLOB
.

Relevant Pages

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