Vista - keeping a user a "standard user"

I am the administrator of my computer, however, my son keeps changing his
user account to an administrator account. How do I stop my children from
changing anything on my computer, besides locking it down? I want them to be
able to use the computer but be protected as well as protecting certain files
and features on my computer. I have Windows Vista. Thank you for your time
and expertise.

Hello Artist4hire,

Be sure to have a strong password that they cannot guess created for each administrator account you have on the computer. They will not be able to change their account type without having to enter the administrator password first. Be sure to enable the built-in Administrator account and give it a password to prevent them from trying to use it as a backdoor to do this.

How to create a password for a user account:
User Account - Create Password

How to enable the built-in Administrator account:
Administrator Account


In addition, you might check out Parental Controls to use on their Standard account to help control what they can use to. This tutorial will help show you how to.

Parental Controls - Setup and Use


Hope this helps you,
Shawn

Thank you "Brink" for responding. I greatly appreciate it!! I am not as
"tech savvy" as my son (he's 15) Even though I am listed as the
"administrator", he changes his account to administrator also, even after I
changed him to a standard user. I changed my password. Will this keep him
from changing his account back to an administrator account once I change him
to a standard account??? I appologize if I seem to be repeating >.<
thanks!!
Theresa

"Brink" wrote:

LOL, I cannot guarantee that he will not find some hack to do it, but if you do all of that, and make sure it has a good password on each account that he cannot guess, it should help prevent him from doing so.

If he keeps on, you might consider booting him off the computer for a bit until he decides to stop doing so.

Let us know how it goes.

Shawn

On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:19:00 -0700, artist4hire
<artist4hire@xxxxxx> wrote:
On your regular account, but what on the built-in Admin account? If
you've not set a password for that, he can easily access it and do
whatever he wishes.

References to the built-in account were in Brink's reply and are in
the quoted material below.


Will this keep him