Install Apps in W2000 Professional

I have had this problem myself. I know with Office 2000 and XP you need to sign on as an Administrator open the Office products so it setups the files needed to run the apps. I found that you only need to open one App, example is Word, and it setups everything for you. Once this is done you can sign on as the other user and setup the Office products for them. If you have them set as a normal user they will not be able to do too much but their work. I have never run into a problem with WinZip, not sure what version you're using but we have WinZip 8.0 installed here. Another thing you can do is sign on as an Administrator make the user you need to setup up the computer for as an Administrator. Then setup everything for them as the Administrator, once you're done just go and remove them as an Administrator and everything should work for them. This is how I do it. You will find some apps that just won't work unless they're setup as a Power User, example is scanning software. Youcan go and give users specific rights to do or not do certain functions; I have done this before also. I hope this helps. Windows 2000 is not too much fun to configure for a non Admin user. :-) Good luck.

Patrick

By default, users will not be able to install apps in W2k unless they are admins. I'd recommend adding the users to the Administrators group for their local machine, NOT the domain Administrators group.

the best and easy solution is to add the users to the power user group. there they can install programs that don't modify the windows directory or add system files. they can not modify the registory , outlook and other ms porducts work fine with this setting. also i twill prevent users from changing their network settings!
They can how ever install items such as winzip. They will not be able to add new hardware or other devices. Which is great for you.
Once the setup is done and you find afew users are not going with standards set by you , as far as install of software. you can remove them from the local power user group and move them down to standard users , then they will not be able to install the smallest program.
This is a great solution for me , I have about 200 users right now and I find it to be very effective. Security is a big thing here.
Further more if you want to tighten the security of install to the machines . I can send you information on how to do this from a domain level instead of at a local computer setting!

In addition to adding the user to the local administrator group(NOT the domain admin group) you may want to setup a custom default profile. MS KB article Q305709 explains how to do this. This way you can install an app as admin, open it as the default user and any configuration changes that you make will apply to all the users of that PC that are members of the everyone group. Read the article for details. This works and is helpful if you are deploying a number of PCs.

If you are using a 2k domain, why not publish them through Active Directory? Otherwise, you might write .bat files to modify ACL's/Registry enteries for programs that require it. The only problem that I have encountered is when a user needs to enter personal info stored in the registry (Palm software being a wonderful example) that is unique to each user. At that point, use (local) admin or Power user accounts. The easiest way I have found to do that is to use computer management remotely, add the (local) everyone group to the (local) Admin Group and have the user log on and install the program. Once logged on, you can remove the everyone group and when the user reboots, no more access...

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