I have just installed a clean version of Win XP Home ed. SP1a on my new 80gb hdd, my system is a HP Pavilion XE748 w/700mhz processor and 320mb ram.

Is there a feature or option that I can “activate� so no other users can download anything to my machine without a password or something along those lines?

I had to install a new hdd and Win XP b/c my old hdd and win me were ruined, corrupted or something. I feel it was b/c one of the other users downloaded Kaaza and some other programs to share files and so he could go look at porn video clips, etc. I don’t care if he wants to look at porn; however, I do not want anything downloaded to my machine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

go to control panel ,Users and create a new acct with limited axcess,then make sure you passworded you Admin acct.and your acct ,.

It does, and no doubt offers some level of security, but since a lot of this garbage out there today finds ways to circumvent that siv we call MS security, I don't have a lot of faith in it.

But I think a bigger problem is the number of applications that won't work at all for a limited user, mine included .

Yes- unfortunatley, I've run into that problem as well. The restrictions are too "global" in that aspect with a normal stand-alone, multi-user computer; you just can't get the finer levels of permission controls that you could in something like a domain environment. Too bad MS decided to make it that way...

They'll have it fixed by the 5th major OS release. That's how long it took to migrate from dos-based Windows to NT-based Windows... (3.1, 95, 98, ME)