Windows XP, Games, and Administrator Privileges?

An anonymous reader asks: "I manage my kids' computer, running Windows XP Professional, with an iron fist. They have limited access rights as I do not want them accidentally deleting the wrong file or downloading trojan software. However, software products, particularly games, fight my user management schemes at every turn. Each user on the computer is member of the 'Gamers' group. This group has full access to the games directory, the place I install all of the game software. I did this since games often need to update configuration files or write save files. Despite these changes, I still run into problems. Our latest two games, Age of Mythology and Battlefield 1942, require administrator privileges irrespective of the file privileges. I have not been able to overcome the problem and it seems, based on Googling, that others are in the same boat. Fellow Slashdot readers, what have you done to overcome this problem?"

Comments

Re:Same problem with my kids - different solution

[PainKilleR-CE]

Rather than rush to fix it, I spent a week doing nothing but said I "was doing research into how to fix the problem." The 1 week without games was sufficiently traumatic that there's been no problem since.

This is actually what drove me to learn how to do an OS reinstall. As time went on, each time Windows ate itself, my dad would take longer and longer to get around to fixing it. Eventually, I got sick of waiting and did it myself. Within about two months I had him in complete understanding of the beauty of keeping data and OS on seperate drives, and now, many years later, my dad calls me when he wants information on how to do something or advice on new hardware.

The real reason admin access is required...

[DiSKiLLeR]

I have found this to be the case, too. I didn't want my gf's son (an 8 year old) having admin access on my XP machine, but half the damn games required admin access.

This required rightclicking on the game's shortcut, selecting 'run as' and calling me over to type in my admin password... several times a day! )(#@()$*@#()$&@#$@#

Its not that programs want to write to the registry, or system files, or anything else.

It simply seems to be the cd copy protection... most games have various types of cd copy protection (i dunno, daemon tools can emulate most of them when it mounts iso's, but anyway). It seems the games require admin access to perform their little sneaky copy protection checks on the CD...

Personally i think this is a real pain in the damn ass (why do we need the CD in there anyway! The game is already installed FFS) and now we require to give all kids admin access on XP machines just to play games! Its a damn nightmare.

No wonder we hate software manufactureres for all their sneaky copy protection, serial keys, product activation, and now needing admin access to run anything.... *sighs*

I'm glad i bought my titanium powerbook. And last week i bought a used G4 cube. Forget windows....

D.