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[Japo]

I don't know about any differences concerning security between Home and Pro. Both include the Windows Firewall. By the way it's a personal firewall, if you install another one you must disable it (the installer will probably do it for you automatically), since two personal firewalls are no good. (Personal means that it's software installed on the computer itself, not on a separate machine.)

As I said Pro is more configurable, but unless you're a sysadmin I don't think you'll care. It's true you can change permissions directly, and in Home you have to do it from safe mode or from the console, but what do you want to change that for? As it is there's order, every user has his folder for documents, folders for settings, there's a folder for shared documents and folders for shared settings, and the rest needs admin rights to write. Changing this setup will just turn things disorderly and hard to find.

[gregor]

why would ypou need more users anyway? On my computer there is only one user and both me and my wife share it.

the other family computer features (besides us) my bro and my father. Seems to work OK all these loooooooong years. except for the incident where i deleted the system files and some other files by accident. But i rectified that with special undelete programme. so there.

[AlumiuN]

One of my friends had multiple users on his (XP Home) computer. Somehow, all of the users now have no admin rights, and so he is kinda stuck, given that he can't access the Control Panel and can't find his XP CD.

[gamers2k]

Has he tried booting into safe mode?

[The Fifth Horseman]

I believe some of the utilities on Hirens Boot CD might help in this case.

[Japo]

Originally Posted by gregor

why would ypou need more users anyway? On my computer there is only one user and both me and my wife share it.

Because you need at least one admin, and using an admin account for everyday matters is grossly unsafe, especially in XP. Yes I know it's what most people do, but it's not a good idea. My computer has an admin account only I can access, my personal limited account for everyday use (also protected with a simple password so that my documents are private), and another limited account for guests.

Actually there's the additional "Administrator" account, but that only appears when booting in safe mode. I guess the reason is to be able to fix the problem of AlumiuN's friend. If even that account was deleted or downgraded, I'm afraid the least you can do is a repair re-installation of Windows (you needn't lose your documents).

[SlowCoder]

There are features that are hidden in different versions of Windows.

For instance, did you know it's possible to get XP Pro to build a software RAID, something that generally only server based OSs are supposed to be able to do? Yes, it is, and natively too. But you have to enable that feature with registry hacks.

What this means to me is that really, Windows XP Home, Pro, etc. are all to a great extent the same, but with the different features enabled/disabled depending on the version.

[gregor]

Originally Posted by Japofran

Because you need at least one admin, and using an admin account for everyday matters is grossly unsafe, especially in XP. Yes I know it's what most people do, but it's not a good idea. My computer has an admin account only I can access, my personal limited account for everyday use (also protected with a simple password so that my documents are private), and another limited account for guests.

yeah but winxp home never asks you when you install them for any admin password. they only ask how many users and i selected one so i only have that one user there. yeah not secure i know.

then again i have the documents all over the place and befor ei even had to re-format the drive when winxp crashed (turns out the failure was caused by faulty sata wire).

[Incappucciato d'Ombra]

Many thanks !!

Now it is time to lower my bank account

[Japo]

Originally Posted by Incappucciato d'Ombra

Now it is time to lower my bank account

Are you? XP is not for sale any longer AFAIK.