Moving files from one user to another on same XP machine

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Sorry for the long title. Here's the story. My 15 year old daughter is taking percussion lessons and she volunteered to update her instructor's mailing list of present and past students in Excel. Currently, the only machine with Excel on it is my Dell laptop running XP Pro. I suggested adding a user profile for her so she could have a separate space to do her work and leave mine alone, but for some reason, my wife thought this was a bit much. My daughter is going along with her project but there are times when she wants to work when I'm not around. I'm unwilling to give her the password since I'm administrator and I don't want her (or her brothers) having that kind of control over my laptop. I use it for business and writing technical articles and would just as soon keep all that separate.

I'd like to create a user profile for her and transfer the work she's done so far into that account. Short of copying her files onto a floppy and then loading them to a new file on her separate account, is there a way to make this transfer inside the machine? Thanks.

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

As Administrator you SHOULD be able to just copy the file using explorer, you will have to be logged on as the administrator to do this, after doing this make sure that your daughter can still access the file and edit it, if not, check the permission in the files properties.

If this info is incorrect i am sure someone will be along shortly

 

The information supplied by Nelix is perfectly correct. Create the new user and log in as her so it creates her a profile and set of folders under
%systemroot%\documents and settings\%username% then log back in as administrator and copy the file to he profile, making sure that you edit the NTFS permissions so she can open and edit the file. You could just copy the administrator profile setting to the Default user before creating her a username but that is a little more complex. That approach may be worth considering if you plan to add additional users who need access to applications and settings stored under your profile.

 

trip

think groups at this point and group members

 

Ok, mission accomplished. I created a group that I can add the whole family to, created my daughter as a user, added her to the group, then copied her excel file to her Documents folder. It was really easy. I showed her how to login and made her change her password from the default one I gave her.

She promptly found the games that come with the program and started exploring. Now, how do you use group policies to limit that a particular group has access to? I let her use the laptop to do her excel project, not play solitare. Sure, I can stop her when I'm around, but the laptop isn't a toy and I'm doing this as a courtesy to her and her work for her percussion instructor.

 

What a spoilsport, Trip - let the kid play .... !!!! :P

(just kidding ... )

 

You can prevent any applications from running via Group
Policy by listing them in the following setting:

User Configuration -> Administrtive templates > System -> Don't run specified Windows applications. I suspect you would be able to un-install them under her profile as well. The only way to scope the GPO on a stand-alone machine will be to alter the NTFS permissions of the GPO.

HTH

 

Luton,

I'm sure you can do it on a standalone machine thru' Group Policy - I can't remember the exact location, but if you run gpedit.msc, that lets you alter Policies locally.

Mind you, I'm prepared to stand corrected as usual ... (too lazy to dig out the books on a Sunday night :roll: )

 

I agree Jak, the point I was making was that there would only be a local policy so it would apply to all users by default unless the permissions were edited.

Now I will stand to be corrected! Where's Sandy when you need him?

 

Ah, with you now Luton - reckon we were both roughly in the same area ...

Yup, time for Sandy to wrap this one up good and proper

 

Make it simple

Rename the application!

 

Sorry Sandy I don't understand, rename what exactly?

 

Log on as administrator and remove the games folder from %systemroot%\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\accessories this will not only remove them from the start menu but also removes them from the %systemroot%\system32 folder as well. XP Should allow it by uninstalling them via control panel then copying the Administrator profile to the default user.

Note I have (quicky) tried this on my w2k machine at home and it worked, I have not tried the XP one.

 

I am sure there is a way to prevent users access to removable media drives in GPO's. I presume this is the only way the little "angels" can get the .exe files onto the machines?

 

...I haven't got as far as creating profiles in Win2000 yet; in fact, I haven't started the MCAD course yet, I'm waiting for the first batch of stuff. However: on a VAX/VMS system, the standard practice is to set up a user account, set the password to some default value, and set that password's expiry date & time to 'immediate', i.e. as soon as the user logs in for the first time, the password immediately expires and the user must then set their own password. Can you do that in Win2000? Can you also set passwords with a regular expiry date, e.g. once a month? Finally, does Win2000 keep an encrypted password file as the VAX does, so that passwords can never be used again once they've expired?

 

Karl,

You can force the password to expire the next time the user logs on in windows 2000 and yes you can set the password to expire anywhere from 1 to 999 days however windows sets a default of 42 days, windows also has a feature called 'enforce password history' this feature keeps a track of the users password history, you can also set the number of past passwords to remember, suggested number is usually about 5 or 6, another handy little feature windows has is the ability to specify how long a password must be kept before it can be changed this prevents users from changing their password several times in rapid succession in order to defeat the purpose of the enforce password history policy

HTH