Bek, WinXP loves to force you to create a personalised Administrator account at every turn and then it attempts to hide the default admin. Your best bet is to play along, but there are ways around it of course. First up, I'll say it again, default admin is getting hidden, not replaced. You aren't losing anything. There are two ways to create a limited account in XP. The second way is to use the Management Console. The first way is to use the User Account panel, provided that you allready have a personalised admin account, it will start letting you create limited accounts.
But since to get rid of that personalised account afterwards we need to go into the Management Console anyway, let's just start there... OK, so I presume you have a basic set up with only the default admin account created:
1. Start-->Run. Enter 'mmc' (without quotes obviously)
2. File-->Add/Remove Snap-in....
3. Add-->Local Users and Groups-->OK, Finish, Close, OK.
4. Local Users and Groups (Local)-->Users.
I have a 'clean' install of XP SP2 here, that is I have five user accounts - HelpAssistant (related to Remote Assistance, which I have disabled because I disabled the related services), SUPPORT_########, some MS thing, also disabled, Guest, not disabled but turned off in User Account panel, ASPNET, which I can probably disable but that has something to do with .NET Framework I'm not likely to ever need to use and of cause Administrator.
A default installation of WinXP will yield at least one more user, the personalised admin account. Since you're not familiar with this, I wonder how you managed to bypass creating that user in the first place?
5. Right click in the empty space below the list of users and select New User....
6. User name is the name given to the account.
7. Full name and Description are not important (Active Directory information).
8. Create, Close.
By default the new user is given Users priveledges, which equates to Limited User in the User Account panel. Since we're using the MMC we have more control, we can assign this user Power User status (see Win2000). If you don't want this, you can quit out and you're done.
9. Double click the freshly created user.
10. Member Of-->Add....
11. Enter 'power users'-->OK, OK. Done!
When you quit out, do not save settings. That saves that console settings (window positioning, Local Users and Groups open, etc, instead of a blank console) - the actual User data is saved automatically.
But since to get rid of that personalised account afterwards we need to go into the Management Console anyway, let's just start there... OK, so I presume you have a basic set up with only the default admin account created:
1. Start-->Run. Enter 'mmc' (without quotes obviously)
2. File-->Add/Remove Snap-in....
3. Add-->Local Users and Groups-->OK, Finish, Close, OK.
4. Local Users and Groups (Local)-->Users.
I have a 'clean' install of XP SP2 here, that is I have five user accounts - HelpAssistant (related to Remote Assistance, which I have disabled because I disabled the related services), SUPPORT_########, some MS thing, also disabled, Guest, not disabled but turned off in User Account panel, ASPNET, which I can probably disable but that has something to do with .NET Framework I'm not likely to ever need to use and of cause Administrator.
A default installation of WinXP will yield at least one more user, the personalised admin account. Since you're not familiar with this, I wonder how you managed to bypass creating that user in the first place?
5. Right click in the empty space below the list of users and select New User....
6. User name is the name given to the account.
7. Full name and Description are not important (Active Directory information).
8. Create, Close.
By default the new user is given Users priveledges, which equates to Limited User in the User Account panel. Since we're using the MMC we have more control, we can assign this user Power User status (see Win2000). If you don't want this, you can quit out and you're done.
9. Double click the freshly created user.
10. Member Of-->Add....
11. Enter 'power users'-->OK, OK. Done!
When you quit out, do not save settings. That saves that console settings (window positioning, Local Users and Groups open, etc, instead of a blank console) - the actual User data is saved automatically.