Gallery: Install programs for any Windows user account

The most important thing you need to do - if you haven’t done so already - is to password-protect your own user account. Both Windows XP and Vista will only allow the following tweak to work if there’s a password-protected Administrator account to call on. If your account isn’t password-protected, click Start and select Control Panel. Windows Vista users should click ‘Add or remove user accounts’ under User Accounts and Family Safety; Windows XP users should click User Accounts followed by ‘Change an account’. Select your user account and click ‘Create a password’, then follow the prompts to do so.

In Windows Vista, stay logged on to your child’s account and double-click the program file. Instead of the familiar User Account Control screen appearing, you’ll see a request for your Administrator account’s password. Just type this in and then follow the wizard to install the program; if prompted about installing it for everyone or just the current user, you can choose the current user so no one else finds the program cluttering up their Windows Desktop. You can also access other Administrator-only functions (those marked with a shield icon) from this user account in the same way.

The process is slightly more complicated in Windows XP but, as before, stayed logged on as your child’s account. If you’re inserting a CD or DVD, you may see the ‘Install Program as Other User’ dialogue box appear, in which case select ‘Run the program as the following user’, select your username from the dropdown menu, enter your user account password and click OK. If this doesn’t appear, right-click the installation file and choose Run as. If prompted, click Run, then select ‘The following user’, select your own user account, enter the password and click OK to install the program.

The process is slightly more complicated in Windows XP but, as before, stayed logged on as your child’s account. If you’re inserting a CD or DVD, you may see the ‘Install Program as Other User’ dialogue box appear, in which case select ‘Run the program as the following user’, select your username from the dropdown menu, enter your user account password and click OK. If this doesn’t appear, right-click the installation file and choose Run as. If prompted, click Run, then select ‘The following user’, select your own user account, enter the password and click OK to install the program.