There are many references in the handbook, forums etc to "signing on to the Administrator account" - but nowhere have I found how to create this account. Is this the XP administrator account? If so, when I sign on using that account - only in safe mode - I no longer have access to steadystate. What am I missing here?

Hi Tony, try str+alt+del 2 Times at the Welcome Screen. Or try the managemet console and add user to the Administrator Groupe.

try str+alt+del 2 Times at the Welcome Screen. Or try the managemet console and add user to the Administrator Groupe. Ok, I bypass the welcome screen, I still can't sign in as "administrator" as I get denied "Unable to log you on because of an account restriction". Which user should I be adding to the administrator group? OK, here is what is going on. This is a test implementation of steadystate in preparation for a possible implementation over several PCs. I have a fresh(ish) install of XP home, during which I set up administrator user "Tony". I then installed steadystate, and aded two users, "user1" and "user2". Now when I start up, I see all three users at the welcome screen. If I check the "remove administrator user name from the welcome screen", it makes no difference - I still see administrator user "Tony" and "user1" and "user2". I just get the feeling there is a step I've missed somewhere.

You are. log into your "tony" account and disable all steadystate restrictions for the moment. Go to Administrative Tools within Control Panel and under Users and Groups, click on the user Administrator. Make sure Account is Disabled is unchecked. Now log out and type in Administrator for the Username and the password you gave during the XP setup. You should now be logged into the built in administrator account. From there you can now put both your user1 and user2 accounts in the Users Group and take them out of the Administrators Group (well, imo, you should :D ) then go into SteadyState and lock down each user that you see fit, and test out the accounts. Philip Jealousy is not proof of love, nor proof of emotional immaturity

Thanks Philip, that pointed me in the right direction. I couldn't do it in XP Home, presumably because of the lack of user and group admin in that version - or am I still missing something? That would imply that you can't really run steadystate properly in an XP home environment. However I also tried it in Vista business, and it worked. CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't work, but there is an "other user" button, which leads to a standard login dialog where I enter the administrator login. That does lead me to a follow up question - did I miss something in the manual? I can't find any reference to any of that in the documentation.

Thanks Philip, that pointed me in the right direction. I couldn't do it in XP Home, presumably because of the lack of user and group admin in that version - or am I still missing something? That would imply that you can't really run steadystate properly in an XP home environment. However I also tried it in Vista business, and it worked. CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't work, but there is an "other user" button, which leads to a standard login dialog where I enter the administrator login. That does lead me to a follow up question - did I miss something in the manual? I can't find any reference to any of that in the documentation. Tony, You are correct that XP Home does NOT support the security features of Professional. I can't speak to whether this is explicitly stated in the manual, I haven't looked in there in a while. SteadyState was designed for XP Pro, not Home as far as I know. Vista Business is a little different than XP in how it handles and displays logins. I have two machines running Vista and their limited accounts log in automatically (by using the 'control userpasswords2' command from the Run dialog). To be honest, when you log out of my Vista machines, it doesn't take you to a login screen that shows all the installed accounts, it takes you to a screen that just says 'Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to logon. When you do, it takes you to a standard login screen so you can put your admin credentials in. I don't know if that is common across vista machines. I've seen this behavior on machines that I have completely wiped the drive and reinstalled Vista from a disk, instead of leaving the machine the way Dell shipped it to us and then configured SteadyState. I don't believe SS is causing this because I have one or two Vista machines (for staff) without SS installed and it exhibits the same behavior. I don't know what I did to make it behave this way on some machines and not others. Weird.. HTH, Philip Complexity is the enemy of Security -- Steve Gibson

Thanks Philip, I think I have it all sorted now.Fortunately the eventual implementation will be on a mix of XP Pro and Vista machines, so all should be well.