unfortunately was...
2 boxes came up on boot.
1 was the original admin acct. [the Dell box];
1 was my new, [non-admin account, [labeled Spike];
side by side, but the keyboard and mouse were locked up/disabled.

the guy @ Geek Squad told me to do this over the phone. It did
unlock my puter btw.

Booting to safe mode or in worst case booting from the installation media would have been sufficient too.

At least you got rid of the mess.

Having an outdated OS will simplify the process of privilege escalation ( gaining admin rights )

once i have done this i cannot download pokerstars updates, why is that and what can i do about it?

Maybe a new install helps this time?

I don't even gave PS permanent admin rights and just checked that updates are working for me.

Did you enter a password for your admin account?

Such things might happen if you don't set a password for the new created account.

hmm seems i dont have the rights to install stars again :S

whats up with that!

and yeah wellju, im 99% i made a password on new account

You don't have the rights to turn it on but no popup is asking for your admin pw?

If so, I assume you have UAC switched off.

Log in to your newly created admin account, check if UAC is switched on (settings as high as possible) and also check if the ps client updates are working on the admin account if you find that UAC was on already.

thanks wj

Wow TY so much for posting this. I just got a virus today followed these steps put in a new user name and walla

easiest way to remove these changes? still not able to install pokerstars updates or even reinstall. has been really good besides that...

Glad it helped you. Removing the admin rights for an existing user might even kill some malware but it's in no way gone from your system and parts of it might still be deep into the system and keep exploits open.
The malware sticky is a very exclusive address for help imo :>



First, try to login on your admin account and make the installation there. That's what we have admin account for, occasional admin tasks.
The PS update not working is something that can surely be fixed easily imo.
Especially because the PS client/update doesn't need admin rights to work properly.
May it be that you have these issues since PS changed its domain from .com to .eu and the reason is a completely different one?

To revert the changes you just give your standard user admin rights again, via the control panel and then you can delete the new admin account you've created. Very simple.
It doesn't hurt at all to create/edit more users and play with it a little (as long you make sure every user has a password and UAC is on).

This is still one of my favourite threads here. I hope everyone follows it.

However, the title is tilting me! Any chance Kerowo can edit "prevent" to read "protect"?

/pedant

More seriously it might just help people searching.

I set this up on my system. It has only been a minor inconvenience so far. Really need to do the kids and my wife's.

I had some trouble with this. I did as the instructions said. restarted. my VPN wasnt working and couldnt figure out how to make it work. decided to switch everything back and couldnt do it. tried to just deleted my new account and i couldnt figure out where to do that. and it wouldnt let me set it back to normal user, OR give admin rights back to my owner account. it was like i was stuck. and i tried logging on as owner and the new account. couldnt make it go back to the way it was. panicked and did a system restore to 3 days ago. dono.

Did you make sure UAC was on? Did you try to install the VPN client on the admin account?

About changing the accounts back to where you started, it was just in the wrong order probably.
Windows demands for an active admin account at all times.
So you first have to give your active account admin rights back before you can delete the newly created admin account.

That can all be done in Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety.

If you can't promote your user account back to admin, while the admin account is still active, there's something seriously screwed up and we'd have to take a closer look at it.

Hey wellju,

Did as you say, however now every time I start my session I have to input my admin password 3 times to get HEM, TableNinja and JoyToKey running. Of the 3, TN isn't even set to run as admin so I don't understand why it needs my admin password every time I run it? Is there anything I can do about this (a white list maybe?) because I'm not sure I can live with putting in 6 passwords (windows login, admin, admin, admin, stars password, stars rsa) every time I want to play. Thanks

Hey Pharo,

unfortunately, there is no really convenient solution as the whole user/rights system is pretty poorly implemented in windows compared to any other operating system.

I personally use http://www.keepass.info/ to further enhance the systems security but the auto-fill option comes quite handy. It also enables you to have really strong passwords you couldn't remember in your head, and just use a key-combination to auto fill in these passwords. (Don't worry, no keylogger can catch your clipboard as every string is encrypted).

About TN and admin rights, the guys from RVG software (HEM) prefer to have all their executables run with admin privileges to not encounter any issues because the poker clients update so often, I assume.

To remove or add admin rights to any application:

Right click on the .exe > properties > compatibility > check/uncheck "run program as admin"

I have no idea why but this isn't working for me even though it seems like it should be simple.

I setup a new admin account and changed my regular account to a standard account.

Like others said My Table ninja and Holdem Manager wont work.

Here's where it gets odd. I go to properties-compatibility and change it to run as admin... it just does it without asking for admin password even though I've logged off and logged in as a standard user.

Except I don't think it really DOES run it as admin it's almost like that check box doesn't mean anything. It still crashes.

So I went into the admin account and tried doing it through there with the "use for all users tab" in the compatability. It still didnt work.. and the weirdest part, when Im logged in in Admin mode.. Table ninja doesn't even HAVE a compatability tab lol even though it does in my standard account.

I'm on Win 7 Home Premium fwiw.

UAC switched on?

To see whether a program is set to run with admin rights permanently, a small blue and yellow shield appears in the bottom right corner.


Additionally, to run a program as admin once, just hold CTRL+SHIFT while opening it or just right click > run as admin.
If you don't get asked for your admin pw you very likely either didn't specify one at account creation or UAC is switched off.
Both would screw up the mechanics.

Yep you are right, it was my UAC, sorry about that, I forgot I turned it off I think HEM recomends you to do it. That was it, HEM and TN seem to be working now, thanks again!

Oh, hmm well all BUT xpadder work. I searched the thread has anyone gotten xpadder to work with this setup? For me it works ONLY when xpadder is the active window so it wont do anything with the tables through table ninja. Once a table pops up it wont work. I had it in compatibility mode for winodows vista and this had worked for almost what 1.5 years now? But if i run xpadder in administrator mode it insta shuts down saying its the wrong version. If i dont it wont shut down but doesn't seem to work. Maybe the UAC is messing it up? I have no idea. Surely someone else that has done this must use xpadder with win 7 though right?

***EDIT***

Just put original account as admin again.. still xpadder only sort of works. Put UAC back to off and restarted now it seems to be working. Any ideas?

Amy chances there's an up to date version from xpadder?

If you don't get it resolved, asking their support might be a good idea too, because if an application stalls because of UAC, it's just an programming issue no body has taken care of.
Although the implementation of the admin/user system is very poor in windows, that's not an excuse for sloppy programming as everything is complicated, but working as intented.

Tried to do this as well but having a few issues:
1) I created a new admin account before realizing I needed to check the UAC settings. I raised them for the admin account but when I try it for my regular account it will not open for me. I can click on anything else in that control panel window but when I click on "change UAC settings," absolutely nothing happens. Does this need to be done for each user account or did adjusting the admin account change my user account as well? If not, how do I get it to let me raise it?
2) Similarly, when I try to run a program as an administrator by right clicking on the program, it doesn't work. Specifically I'm trying to do this with Secunia PSI and it gives me a message that the program can only be run as an administrator, even though I'm telling it to open as admin.
3) When I created the admin account, I first tried to name it "administrator" and it told me there was already a user by that name, although I didn't see it there. Is that the hidden admin account and should I be using that instead?
4) I updated postgres last night before I created the administrator user, and when I was doing it I noticed that there was an extra user named "postgres." Is that ok/normal?

Sorry for all the questions but thanks so much for your help!

1) Did you try a reboot after increasing the UAC settings? You can set the UAC settings individually for every account.
Usually, when you're about to change any settings in the control panel (as standard user), exactly the moment when you said "nothing happens" that's when a pop up should come up and asks for your admin password. Did you specify one?

2) Weird, did you specify an admin password?

3) Yes, "Administrator" is the name of the hidden admin account and can't be used for an other account.

4) Yep, postgres user is fine and necessary.

I did reboot after I created the admin account but not after changing the UAC settings, so apparently that was my problem. Admin password has been set so I think I'm good. Thanks!