Vista - opening a guest log on account in vista

I have tried to open the guest account in vista by turning on the option from
the administrator screen. When the desktop tries to load, I get about 2
dozen error messages : "windows can not open <name>.exe". It offers to
search the web for a program to open the .exe file - obviously this is messed
up. After closing all the error messages, I have a plain blue desktop and
several blank icons.

I'd appreciate any hints on this.

Thanks

What do you mean by "administrator screen"?
To add a guest account you need to be at Control Panel\User Accounts.
In any event, start your PC in Safe Mode and run System Restore to a time
before you did whatever you did.

"BZim" <BZim@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:E3CADCD7-7E3C-40C1-AB5E-46840A3442C9@xxxxxx

Here's what I did...

I went into the control panel and clicked on "add or remove user account"

Then I clicked on the icon for the "guest account" which was off.

After this, when I would try to log in as guest, or switch to guest, vista
threw all those error messages out - that it doesn't know how to open a
bloody .exe file!

I'm pretty sure that the microsoft programmers are still familiar with the
..exe extension. I'm just trying to make the guest logon work for security
purposes. I can turn it back off without any problem, but that is not what I
was looking for.

Thanks.

"Bob" wrote:

BZim wrote:
Actually, for security purposes you want to leave the Guest user account
disabled. The Guest account is a system account meant to allow someone
without a regular user account on the computer to log in temporarily to do
some job. It is not meant for when you are feeling hospitable to visitors.

If you want to have a user account for friends/family, then make one called
"Visitors" or the like and make it a Standard account.

Since you didn't give any names of executables associated with the error
messages, I can only guess that whatever you have running at Startup
doesn't like the Guest account. But that's just a guess since I don't have
anything concrete to go on. It's a moot point anyway unless you get the
same issues under a new Standard user account. If you do, then certainly
post back but with the exact text of any error messages, including the
names of the problem executables.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!

Here's the list of the .exe files that wouldn't run:

rundll32 (5 instances)
volpanlv
sidebar
zlclient
language
reader_sl
Ituneshelper
itc
nerocheck
PDVDServ
QTTask
rthdvcpl
syntpenh

and bluetooth.lnk wouldn't run.

BZim wrote:
Yes, but do they run under a new Standard user account?

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!