WinXP "run program as..."

Edit: heh, this got rather lengthy. My actual question is in the last paragraph. Feel free to skip ahead :)

Get this: I'm installing a new computer at my father's work, upgrading him from win98 to xp. I installed about everything, and end up with only his banking-software left. Installing that software is no problem. There's a quick InstallShield popup, the obvious questions, and thats it.

Next, I switch to the userprofile assigned to the person who's in charge of, well, making transactions with the bank. I fire up the program and try to login. "Yaddayada.mdb could not be found." WTF? I'm opening explorer and find the file just where it is supposed to be. Could this be a user-conflict? I switch back to the administrator-profile and deinstall everything, only to switch back to the user-profile again (sigh) and install it all over (again, sigh).

Exact same problem.

Ok, this is a little weird. Thank god, there's always the internet. After a quick search I learn the location of the supportsite of the bank. I'm stunned to read this:

Quote:

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(loosly translated)
Installing the "Rabobank Telebankieren Extra" software under Windows XP requires a user that has access to ALL RESOURCES that Windows XP offers. These so called ADMINISTRATOR RIGHTS are also manditory for all those who use this software on a PC running Windows XP. (...)

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Is it just me, or is just incredibly stupid to give a user that only has to perform banking-related task full admin-powers?

This is how I thought to bypass the problem: Windows XP lets you run a shortcut as another user (you can enable this under "properties", "advanced"). Now, each time I want to start the software, I'm prompted for a username and password. Yes, this works for me, but I'd rather not have this user constantly have to fill out that. Isn't there a way to specify a user (and password) once, and use that indefinatly? Any ideas?

They are not telling you to give the user Admin rights on the network, just on that LOCAL PC.
Make the User a member of the Local PC's Administrators group. (Right Click on My PC, Choose Manage, go to Local users and Groups, Groups, and add the use to the Administrators group. This will not make the user a Admain at the Domain level. This will give the user complete control over their own PC. (we too have software that requires each user to be an member of the Admins group on their local PC and have not found any issues other than with some AV programs...
Hope this helps you.

I was aware of that. Heh, making this user member of the network admins is completely out of the question. Read the link I provided under 'stupid', above. That guy was head of a financial department. See why I don't want to give these people -any- installing or deinstalling capabilities whatsoever? :)

It sounds to me the software in question is not actually intended for use under NT/2000/XP. There is a lot of old software out there that will only run if the user is an administrator that was originally meant for use on 9x machines.

You could try a couple of things here. The most obvious and satisfactory solution would be to demand an upgrade from the software vendor, as their product is flawed, or see if they already have a new version out. Sounds like the software is dated, as you're upgrading from a Win98 machine.

Another thing to try is adding your dad to the power users group, sometimes that works without giving admin rights. You could also try using the in-built Win98 emulation by right-clicking the program's shortcut, going to properties, and selecting the appropriate emulation on the compatibility tab.

If all of these fail, then there is always the option of dual-booting 98, or keeping the old 98 box and installing VMS on it. Then your dad could run the banking software on the 98 box, but use a remote session from the XP machine to access it. I'd strongly recommend not doing this though, because of the security implications of VMS, especially with bank details at stake.