Help with WinXP Pro User Accounts Practices

[eecon]

My T61p is a stand-alone single-user (myself only) WinXP Pro SP3 machine that is never connected to any networks other than a hardware-router which connects to my printer and cable modem. I use updated retail internet security-suite software (security software has served me well over the years). I have 3 User Accounts .... the original default Administrator, User1 (my everyday account) and User2 (my backup prolife account).

After I first created User2 and copied my properly operating User1 profile over to it (per Microsoft's standard online KB procedures), I still had to spend a great deal of time tweaking User2 to make it virtually identical to User1 in all ways (except for a different Desktop background theme). Well okay .... so far so good.

I presently logon to User1 automatically (using settings in TweakUI) and have been installing all my software and updates via User1.

Question 1:

Because User1 and User2 are both Admin accounts, may I assume correctly that I do not have to first logon to the system's default Administrator account to properly install Software and Lenovo updates?

Note:

I fully understand the risks associated with giving my everyday user account full Administrator privileges, but I feel my specific everyday needs on this machine require such privileges. I have tried Power User level and found too many problems with the complex engineering applications I run daily under that privilege level.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 56992.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/comput ... count.mspx

Question 2:

Is there a better way to keep User1 and User2 data fully sync'd besides logging in to User2 every day or two for a few minutes in order to make sure it's working properly and its data is manually sync'd with User1, i.e. download Outlook Email (my email provider's server is set to hold it for 7 days), update any new User2 IE7 Favorites and/or User2 My Document folder files)?

Both profiles each have their own separate My Documents and Favorites folders with duplicate content. I've set WinXP Pro File Permissions to restrict access to User1's "My Documents", "Favorites" and Local User "Temp" Folders when logged on as User2, and visa versa (in some deference to security because I'm using an everyday account that has admin privileges). Also, I'm not worried about using up excessive HDD space keeping duplicate personal User folders .... I still have 60% left on my main 320GB BDE HDD plus another 320GB from the BDE unit in the UltraBay adapter.

Thanks

[RealBlackStuff]

1) No need to log in as any other user, since all your accounts are Admin accounts.

2) You are making things unnecessary complicated, and it won't do you much good in case of a hard disk failure.
Accounts rarely (if ever) "break", unless someone is messing with them.

Instead of all this going back and forth between User1 and User2, invest in a proper backup strategy.
You have the space so use it!
Get Acronis TrueImage or the like (but not Norton Ghost!) and make a full image, which you store on your second HD.
If you like, you could take incremental backups/images of the changed data on a daily or weekly basis.
Once a month at least, take another complete fresh image and continue with incrementals.
Or if you have important stuff, image every day before you close down. This only takes a few minutes.
(Or at least just backup/copy your user data on a daily basis).

[eecon]

Instead of all this going back and forth between User1 and User2, invest in a proper backup strategy.
You have the space so use it!
Get Acronis TrueImage or the like (but not Norton Ghost!) and make a full image, which you store on your second HD.
If you like, you could take incremental backups/images of the changed data on a daily or weekly basis.
Once a month at least, take another complete fresh image and continue with incrementals.
Or if you have important stuff, image every day before you close down. This only takes a few minutes.
(Or at least just backup/copy your user data on a daily basis).

I've already been using Acronis TI Home v11.0 to weekly clone each Hitachi 320GB BDE HDD to another indentical Hitachi 320GB BDE via an UltraBay adapter ...... 4 identical drives are being used for all this.

Immediately after each weekly cloning, I also make a full image of each drive using Acronis to a pair of 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black HHDs in external enclosures connected via eSATA cables from the T61p's express54 slot eSATA RAID adapter. Then once daily I make incremental back-up images using Acronis to the WD externals.

The problem with this backup strategy is that a slowly corrupting User profile is hard to catch or know when it has started happening. That's what happened to me once 5 or 6 years ago and all the weekly cloning/Images with daily incrementals did not fully save the day .... I had lots of useless backups containing a slowly corrupting User profile that took several months to fully manifest itself.

[RealBlackStuff]

I can't say much about that. I am the only user on my PC for instance. My install of XP-Pro dates from May 2005.
I have never had any issues with my single account. I have the ubiquitous admin account, and just the one user account.
I use Acronis TI whenever I think of it. Never had a crash/BSOD or a corrupt account since 2005.
Maybe being paranoid about backups causes anomalies?

[eecon]

Maybe being paranoid about backups causes anomalies?

Yeah ...... You're probably right