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can't access SteadyState settings
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can't access SteadyState settings
12:18 PM EDT 10/24/07
I am setting up a new public computer. Somehow, I lost access to SteadyState during the process and cannot get to its settings to finish installation. It looks like the administrator account may have been accidentally configured as a limited account. I've tried finding SteadyState through the search feature and by browsing in program files, but find nothing that I can use to access the program to either uninstall and start over or finish setting up security. Will I have to reformat the drive and redo everything?
Re: can't access SteadyState settings
12:35 PM EDT 10/25/07 as a reply to Teresa Pennington.
Answering my own question:

I apparently made two mistaken assumptions based on my experience with previous Microsoft security tools:

1. I thought that I could create an account within SteadyState that would serve as the administrator account, not realizing that even a "no restrictions" account wasn't the same as administrator.

2. I also assumed that account settings were not effective until the disk protection was turned on.

Once in the administrator account, I finally found an exe file in the SteadyState folder that allowed me to access SteadyState settings (will have to create a shortcut). I still have hours of work ahead before the computer can be used by the public, but this problem has been solved.
Re: can't access SteadyState settings
2:14 PM EDT 10/25/07 as a reply to Teresa Pennington.
Glad you figured this out. I was traveling and saw your post in passing, but was confused about what was going on - which makes sense since you had that conceptual leap to make.

For anyone else, those are two really important things to know starting out with SteadyState:
1. You don't don anything in SS with the admin account - it is assumed that account exists already and you otherwise never refer to it in the SS application.
2. Disk protection is a completely separate thing from the account security, and best practice is to not turn it on until everything else is completely as you want it and has been tested. I'm not sure with this new version, but with the old version, you didn't even want to turn it on at all if you were going to ghost your image - you waited to turn it later on the target machines.

It does seem odd though that you had to search for the exe file. The application should have shown up in your start menu - at least in the account where you first installed it.

Dale