Reinstall...
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So I'm looking forward to a weekend of reinstalling Windows XP et. al. on my sons gaming computer. It was totally infested with viruses, rootkits and all kinds of other horrors. It's my own fault really, for allowing a seven year old to run with administrator rights. But hang on just a second - is it really my fault? Many of his games just won't work without admin rights. If you install them under the administrator account, there's about a 50% chance that they will work under a different account with lower priveleges. And even if you try to use the "Run as Administrator" option, they often don't work properly and the PITA involved is just too much to bear. I've spent countless hours mucking about trying to get things to work on a restricted account with no success, and eventually I just threw my hands in the air, sold my soul to the devil and made him an administrator. I feel truly sorry for the more casual user that doesn't even know about restricted accounts. :sigh: I'm not really sure what the point of this post is. It's either to give you all a chance to laugh at me for allowing it to happen, or it's an opportunity to rail against poorly written software that requires admin rights to run properly. Or maybe you want to discuss the crappy security model in Windows.
The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter
How about some AV software? or a firewall? How about blocking where he surfs? How about automatic updates? I mean the viruses don't just waltz onto the computer by magic. Where is your seven year old surfing that he's picking up this much malware? There are any number of things you can do to guard against this without removing admin priveledges. Which you should anyway... So yeah, it's kind of your own fault. I've been working in IT for years and I get computers brought to me all the time that have been infected with everything. And 99% of the time they aren't running any preventative software or they have never installed an update. I have 0 sympathy and it is far from being MS's fault. Besides, I've been a hardcore gamer for years and I haven't run into that many titles that require Full Admin rights to run.
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Try this for a size: I'd similar problem. Most of my kids games won't work under restricted account. It turns out that, all the games where trying to save a file and the were all in the \Program Files folder. I created \Games Folder under the root drive ( in my case C:\Games) and installed all their games there. Most of them go by default to C:\Program Files Then I Opened C:\Games for all accounts Full Read / Write Access. This solved about 90% of the games. The rest 10% were trying to write somewhere else:mad:. I run FileMon and figured out which folder they are trying to access an gave them permission (except couple decided to yank them) Now, they run their games as Restricted users and I have no problems. :-D Hope this works for you too.
Yusuf Can I help you?
modified on Friday, April 24, 2009 5:02 PM
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So I'm looking forward to a weekend of reinstalling Windows XP et. al. on my sons gaming computer. It was totally infested with viruses, rootkits and all kinds of other horrors. It's my own fault really, for allowing a seven year old to run with administrator rights. But hang on just a second - is it really my fault? Many of his games just won't work without admin rights. If you install them under the administrator account, there's about a 50% chance that they will work under a different account with lower priveleges. And even if you try to use the "Run as Administrator" option, they often don't work properly and the PITA involved is just too much to bear. I've spent countless hours mucking about trying to get things to work on a restricted account with no success, and eventually I just threw my hands in the air, sold my soul to the devil and made him an administrator. I feel truly sorry for the more casual user that doesn't even know about restricted accounts. :sigh: I'm not really sure what the point of this post is. It's either to give you all a chance to laugh at me for allowing it to happen, or it's an opportunity to rail against poorly written software that requires admin rights to run properly. Or maybe you want to discuss the crappy security model in Windows.
The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter
I had a similar problem with my 5-year old. The software is 10-15 years old so the concept of administrator didn't even exist back then. Rather than make him an admin, I just told him that when the box comes up (complaining about not being able to write to a log file), see how fast you can click the big button.
"Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw later in life what you have deposited along the way." - Unknown
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
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How about some AV software? or a firewall? How about blocking where he surfs? How about automatic updates? I mean the viruses don't just waltz onto the computer by magic. Where is your seven year old surfing that he's picking up this much malware? There are any number of things you can do to guard against this without removing admin priveledges. Which you should anyway... So yeah, it's kind of your own fault. I've been working in IT for years and I get computers brought to me all the time that have been infected with everything. And 99% of the time they aren't running any preventative software or they have never installed an update. I have 0 sympathy and it is far from being MS's fault. Besides, I've been a hardcore gamer for years and I haven't run into that many titles that require Full Admin rights to run.
I'd have to concur, also most of the games I've run within the last 4-5 years save to docs and settings under the user account, saving to prog files seems plain weird.
10110011001111101010101000001000001101001010001010100000100000101000001000111100010110001011001011
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I had a similar problem with my 5-year old. The software is 10-15 years old so the concept of administrator didn't even exist back then. Rather than make him an admin, I just told him that when the box comes up (complaining about not being able to write to a log file), see how fast you can click the big button.
"Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw later in life what you have deposited along the way." - Unknown
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
A game within a game? :D
10110011001111101010101000001000001101001010001010100000100000101000001000111100010110001011001011
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that will do it too.
Yusuf Can I help you?
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I'd have to concur, also most of the games I've run within the last 4-5 years save to docs and settings under the user account, saving to prog files seems plain weird.
10110011001111101010101000001000001101001010001010100000100000101000001000111100010110001011001011
MidwestLimey wrote:
saving to prog files seems plain weird.
We talking here old games. I have kids games that don't even know the concept of \program Files. Oldie Goldie :-D
Yusuf Can I help you?
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So I'm looking forward to a weekend of reinstalling Windows XP et. al. on my sons gaming computer. It was totally infested with viruses, rootkits and all kinds of other horrors. It's my own fault really, for allowing a seven year old to run with administrator rights. But hang on just a second - is it really my fault? Many of his games just won't work without admin rights. If you install them under the administrator account, there's about a 50% chance that they will work under a different account with lower priveleges. And even if you try to use the "Run as Administrator" option, they often don't work properly and the PITA involved is just too much to bear. I've spent countless hours mucking about trying to get things to work on a restricted account with no success, and eventually I just threw my hands in the air, sold my soul to the devil and made him an administrator. I feel truly sorry for the more casual user that doesn't even know about restricted accounts. :sigh: I'm not really sure what the point of this post is. It's either to give you all a chance to laugh at me for allowing it to happen, or it's an opportunity to rail against poorly written software that requires admin rights to run properly. Or maybe you want to discuss the crappy security model in Windows.
The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter
If you haven't tried this already, add him to the Power Users group. That might be enough. Otherwise Yusuf's idea seems like a really good one.
BDF People don't mind being mean; but they never want to be ridiculous. -- Moliere
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Try this for a size: I'd similar problem. Most of my kids games won't work under restricted account. It turns out that, all the games where trying to save a file and the were all in the \Program Files folder. I created \Games Folder under the root drive ( in my case C:\Games) and installed all their games there. Most of them go by default to C:\Program Files Then I Opened C:\Games for all accounts Full Read / Write Access. This solved about 90% of the games. The rest 10% were trying to write somewhere else:mad:. I run FileMon and figured out which folder they are trying to access an gave them permission (except couple decided to yank them) Now, they run their games as Restricted users and I have no problems. :-D Hope this works for you too.
Yusuf Can I help you?
modified on Friday, April 24, 2009 5:02 PM
I do this too, but it doesn't always work. One of his favorite games, Titan Quest, can't find any of the text resources if you install it under a separate account from the one you play it under. But yeah... after this weekend he's going to go into severe lockdown on that computer. Restricted access only!
The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter
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How about some AV software? or a firewall? How about blocking where he surfs? How about automatic updates? I mean the viruses don't just waltz onto the computer by magic. Where is your seven year old surfing that he's picking up this much malware? There are any number of things you can do to guard against this without removing admin priveledges. Which you should anyway... So yeah, it's kind of your own fault. I've been working in IT for years and I get computers brought to me all the time that have been infected with everything. And 99% of the time they aren't running any preventative software or they have never installed an update. I have 0 sympathy and it is far from being MS's fault. Besides, I've been a hardcore gamer for years and I haven't run into that many titles that require Full Admin rights to run.
It is Windows XP SP3 with all the latest updates and it also has Avast on there, and it still didn't stop any of it. Of course, the boot time scanner found it (and it was then that I decided to do a complete re-install), but the On-Access scanner seems to be pretty much useless... For a seven year old, he's pretty computer savvy. He still has a lot to learn about what not to click on (obviously!), but as far as navigating around the internet he's pretty sharp. He'll go to eBay and start searching for new Nintendo DS games, pokemon cards and stuf like that. He uses Google to find walkthroughs and cheats for his games. Unfortunately, he likes to play a lot of Flash games on websites that are covered with adverts, and he hasn't quite picked up on the fact that the adverts are lying. "No", I tell him, "You haven't really won an Xbox, so don't click on it". :doh: Anyway, after this weekend he will be going into lockdown on that computer! And besides, it needed a fresh install anyway - there was only 800Mb left on drive C: and it was full of my old crap before I migrated full time to a laptop.
The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter
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So I'm looking forward to a weekend of reinstalling Windows XP et. al. on my sons gaming computer. It was totally infested with viruses, rootkits and all kinds of other horrors. It's my own fault really, for allowing a seven year old to run with administrator rights. But hang on just a second - is it really my fault? Many of his games just won't work without admin rights. If you install them under the administrator account, there's about a 50% chance that they will work under a different account with lower priveleges. And even if you try to use the "Run as Administrator" option, they often don't work properly and the PITA involved is just too much to bear. I've spent countless hours mucking about trying to get things to work on a restricted account with no success, and eventually I just threw my hands in the air, sold my soul to the devil and made him an administrator. I feel truly sorry for the more casual user that doesn't even know about restricted accounts. :sigh: I'm not really sure what the point of this post is. It's either to give you all a chance to laugh at me for allowing it to happen, or it's an opportunity to rail against poorly written software that requires admin rights to run properly. Or maybe you want to discuss the crappy security model in Windows.
The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter
I feel your pain, only my problem was my 17-year-old. Oddly, my 15-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter have had no problems whatsoever. At worse they fill the browser cache with Pokemon and Naratu videos (no, don't get the attraction either.) Fortunately, my 17-year-old hasn't managed to download spyware in four years, but has downloaded some stuff that freaked me out, like a peer-to-peer program that made it easier to communicate with friends while playing various games, but mostly WOW. It was cool except the default settings exposed the entire computer to your network of "friends." (Turned out it was more cool than useful and a few weeks after I severely restricted the rights, I uninstalled it.) I ended up reducing everyone's rights (except mine) to restricted accounts. My 15-year-old noticed immediately; he plays lots of old games and old games don't like that. After selectively opening rights for a few games, I just made him admin again. My wife noticed because I'd moved some folders into her "My Documents", but had forgotten to change the rights on them. The 17-year-old noticed because, well, he couldn't mess up the computer like before. Unfortunately, he can't burn CDs because of something dumb with Nero (on the other hand, it's kept my CDR stack from being depleted.) Good news is that he did learn his lesson and hasn't tried installing junk since. (The other thing that's very annoying with my two oldest is MySpace. My God does that pile of junk install all sorts of crap on your system if you use their piece-o-crap messenger. And it doesn't do it nicely or neatly; it just plasters shortcuts and auto installers all over the place. Worse, their messenger is a memory and speed hog. I wish I'd known 10 years ago that you could create rubbish and make millions; I wouldn't have tried so hard.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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I feel your pain, only my problem was my 17-year-old. Oddly, my 15-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter have had no problems whatsoever. At worse they fill the browser cache with Pokemon and Naratu videos (no, don't get the attraction either.) Fortunately, my 17-year-old hasn't managed to download spyware in four years, but has downloaded some stuff that freaked me out, like a peer-to-peer program that made it easier to communicate with friends while playing various games, but mostly WOW. It was cool except the default settings exposed the entire computer to your network of "friends." (Turned out it was more cool than useful and a few weeks after I severely restricted the rights, I uninstalled it.) I ended up reducing everyone's rights (except mine) to restricted accounts. My 15-year-old noticed immediately; he plays lots of old games and old games don't like that. After selectively opening rights for a few games, I just made him admin again. My wife noticed because I'd moved some folders into her "My Documents", but had forgotten to change the rights on them. The 17-year-old noticed because, well, he couldn't mess up the computer like before. Unfortunately, he can't burn CDs because of something dumb with Nero (on the other hand, it's kept my CDR stack from being depleted.) Good news is that he did learn his lesson and hasn't tried installing junk since. (The other thing that's very annoying with my two oldest is MySpace. My God does that pile of junk install all sorts of crap on your system if you use their piece-o-crap messenger. And it doesn't do it nicely or neatly; it just plasters shortcuts and auto installers all over the place. Worse, their messenger is a memory and speed hog. I wish I'd known 10 years ago that you could create rubbish and make millions; I wouldn't have tried so hard.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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When I was 17 I often had to boot into safemode to remove bad things that my parents installed (and I restricted their rights), instead of the other way round :)
My brothers and I have debated doing this to my Dad, a retired PhD in Physics who once asked if all those files in "System32" were really needed. We all came so close to saying "No, Dad, just delete them." :)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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So I'm looking forward to a weekend of reinstalling Windows XP et. al. on my sons gaming computer. It was totally infested with viruses, rootkits and all kinds of other horrors. It's my own fault really, for allowing a seven year old to run with administrator rights. But hang on just a second - is it really my fault? Many of his games just won't work without admin rights. If you install them under the administrator account, there's about a 50% chance that they will work under a different account with lower priveleges. And even if you try to use the "Run as Administrator" option, they often don't work properly and the PITA involved is just too much to bear. I've spent countless hours mucking about trying to get things to work on a restricted account with no success, and eventually I just threw my hands in the air, sold my soul to the devil and made him an administrator. I feel truly sorry for the more casual user that doesn't even know about restricted accounts. :sigh: I'm not really sure what the point of this post is. It's either to give you all a chance to laugh at me for allowing it to happen, or it's an opportunity to rail against poorly written software that requires admin rights to run properly. Or maybe you want to discuss the crappy security model in Windows.
The StartPage Randomizer - The Windows Cheerleader - Twitter
Re-install. Register and verify with micro$haft Find drivers, and install. Set up everything. Now create a HDD image on DVD so that next time (or next week) it is a lot easier - just scrub and restore from safe image.
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