User Account Configuration...

...so I'm going to college in two days and would like to setup my computer so that other people (namely my no less than THREE roomates) can use it as comfortably as possible with as limited access as possible.

Here's the deal: I'm anal retentive about my computer. I just bought it, spent a LOT of money, and don't want to take any chances. I am setting up a guest user account and I want to set it so that users can do word processing, surf the web, listen to any music CD's or MP3s I have personally downloaded, play the games I have installed myself, and check their email if possible. THATS ABOUT IT. I would appreciate it if you guys could also let me know if any of these things are not possible to do with WinXP Pro.

I need to know how to change the following settings JUST FOR THE NEW GUEST ACCOUNT:

-Turn all downloading, of any kind, OFF (even if it means they can't check email)
-Restrict access to ALL programs except those I set as usable.
-Set these specific programs AS usable to guests.
-Play online games (through gamespy, etc) I have installed (any issues with uploading even though downloading will hopefully be locked?).
-Setup and lock the desktop- background, power settings, resolution, icons, arrangement, everything...- and start menu.


I think that is the bulk of what i'm concerned with, but I will post other issues in this thread when I can think of them. Thanks in advance for any tips or pointers you can throw at me!

Wow, this i gonna take a minute. For some of this stuff you can do by simple permissions and settings, the rest are going to have to be security policies. This is done in by going to Start>Run type mmc into the run box and hit enter. Then goto File>Add/Remove Snap-in. Click the Add button in the window that pops up and select "Group Policy" then click Add, then close then Ok. Now Ill have to look things up because in XP there are some 500 or so (forgot actually number but its a lot) different policies that can be configured in XP. You can look around in them if you want to see what is avaliable. Ill see what I can do for finding the right ones. One thing I might recommend is make a new user account for your roomates to use rather than the Guest account, since its built in and has some strange permissions assigned to it. plus you dont want to risk breaking default accounts in Windows.

yeah i already made a new account (called "guest account", not simply "guest", like the one Microsoft has provided).

Creating the additional "Guest Account" is pretty pointless and counter-productive. By default, Windows sets the permissions and security settings for the built-in Guest account to allow VERY limited access/functionality. However, it also, sets the default access/permissions for manually created accounts to be quite a bit more relaxed (since you are only given Administrator and User as options for the account type...which you would then have to go in and manually configure to be less relaxed.)

Matter of fact, Windows even places pretty strict limitations for quite a few other aspects of the operating system with the built-in Guest account...such as the User Profile limitations, amount of allowable cache, less allocated space to store a user's "History" (recently opened files, pages, etc.)...just to name a few. Some of those additional settings can prove to be kind of tricky if you don't read up so as to have a good idea of what it is that you are altering and the acceptable values and all that fun stuff!

To wrap it all up...start off with the Guest account as you template to work off of and go from there...you'll save a good amount of time!

Yes, but...

The guest accounts, although they may be more restrictive than those you can choose to create, are not as rectrictive as I would like them to be. Which is the reason I started this thread to begin with...
The bottom line is, you have more control of setup and options with an account you set up and, while no one seems to know an easy way to do the things I'd like to do with it, I am relatively sure that these are not impossibilities. This is why I am not simply satisfied with the default guest account.