I thought I had beat the most famous non-admin problem of running quickbooks by using the “run as” option. My days as a non-admin user were almost becoming a full week of success until I tried to revisit a VB6 project and compile it. Throw on the breaks. System Registry access problems. I logged out and back in as admin and gave myself full perms on the hkey_local machine section. Back to my own login – still no compilation. Log out. Log back in as admin, well it’s trying to register these classes so it needs access to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. I really don’t wanna do it, because anything that invades my computer in an email will now have access but – what’s a girl to do. Full perms on the classes_root, chug chug while it goes through all gazillion of the. Log out, log back in as me the non-admin, pretty background screen and then….nothing. Nothing nothing. I can get to task manager, get to the dos prompt from there, etc. but I cannot run explorer. Hmmm says I. Back to admin login, everything *looks* okay in documents and settings. Fiddle around for a few hours. Try to do a safe mode login – same thing basic effect with out the pretty picture, but I get all the “safe mode” bits in the 4 corners.

I create a new local login and login as that. Same.

Create a new domain login and login as that. Same.

I go back to admin and gulp – make myself an admin and all is well again. except now I’m back to being a non-admin and feel very exposed and wasted many hours today. Oh well.

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