Require password to run program?

[Kelemvor]

Howdy,

I'm running Win XP Home and am wondering if there's a way to take a particular shortcut to a program and put a password on it so when you run it, it asks for a password, and then if you enter it the program runs as normal. Can this be done in a way that doesn't involve actually logging on separate users and things like that?

 

[wlee]

This is not as "clean" as you would prob like, but you could do this. I *WISH* there was a built in tool to do this.

E.G., if you wanted to restrict IE usage. Create a new shortcut. Make the target path line read like this C:\WINDOWS\system32\runas.exe /user:ComputerName\administrator "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" ( Replace "ComputerName" with the name of the local machine - Replace "Administrator" with the name of the user credentials you want to use ) Then go to the StartMenu and get rid of the icon for the program group of the local user. Delete all the other normal shortcuts for it.

 

[Kelemvor]

Well the problem is that there is only one user on thie PC and that user is always logged in. I just don't want other peopel to run a particular program shortcut unless they know the password.

Oh well.

 

[cleverhandle]

I'm pretty sure there's no nice native way to do this. But there's probably third party stuff out there on the Net somewhere. I found this on the first Google page. If you can program at all, this should be a very simple problem - just prompt for a password, call a crypt()-like function and compare it to a known hash. I don't know enough Windows programming to do this nicely, though.

 

[NogginBoink]

No, there is no outright way to do this.

The best you can do is deny read/execute permissions to all users but the one that's supposed to run the program, set up a shortcut to run as a different user, and when users attempt to run the shortcut, they'll be required to type that user's password.

 

[theAnimal]

There are some password protection programs here.