Managing Multiple User Profiles in Windows XP?

ALC Technician asks: "I work as a computer technician at Ferris State University, and we use Windows based systems for most of our faculty and student computers. We've been running into a lot of issues with user profiles, particularly in Windows XP, such as setting the systems up while logged in as Administrator and getting the configuration to propigate to the standard user accounts. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to give the users appropriate rights to the machine without sacrificing system security?"

Comments

What Software?

[lostindenver]

Half the software I support requires the user to be a Local admin. It is a problem the way we worked around it was to run that software on a terminal server.

Re:Great attitude, dude(tte)s

[acousticiris]

The reality is...I work in that environment. And I think more than a few of the Slashdot readers do as well.
You have to know your enemy (read: Gates) before you can defeat him. Truly the only reason I *HATE* Microsoft is because of their license agreements, and their corporate tactics. I don't *hate* Windows XP, but I won't sell my soul in a license agreement to Microsoft so that they can feel warm and cuddly that I have not stolen their software.
I can't stand a company that just blatently assumes that everyone running their product is stealing it, so they need to put some kind of "IRS" style auditable protection into their applications.

I believe that many people resort to piracy because when you buy many applications, music, movies, etc, you're so limited as to what you are "allowed" to do with them that it doesn't seem worth the cost.
...My two canadian pennies.