Any way to allow all users to install USB drives?

[iladelf]

Allow me to explain; gotta few laptops where we (the company I'm now working for) have clean installed Windows, and given each laptop a specific username and password so that anyone using the laptop can enter that info, then login to the local computer, and viola!, can join either our wireless network, or ones at Starbucks, etc., for that matter.

However, we have a really odd problem with USB drives. Specifically, when inserted, the Found New Hardware dialog box pops up, saying "You must be a member of the Administrator Group on this computer to install this hardware." Now, we've given "Power User" rights to this generic user account, so I would have thought this would have been enough to allow a thumb drive install. Guess not.

Any ideas? I've tried setting usbstor.inf and .pnf to full control for power users, looked at various registry settings (which appear to be ok) amongst other things. I really don't want to give this user Admin privileges; further, even though I have an image of this computer, I don't want to have to nuke and pave it every other week. And also, since this laptop is NOT joining our domain, and the rest of our computers are and are having no problems with this issue, we know there's some kind of GPO controlling it on the domain. Bad news is we have no Net Admin at the moment at work to fix this. So there ya go; look forward to your comments.

[Nospicer]

what O/S are the laptops running?

[iladelf]

Yes, guess that would have been a nice bit of detail to provide (sorry). This is an XP Pro machine, specifically a Fujitsu B6210 Lifebook.

I've tried this...

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=204382&messageID=2124246

and this...

http://x220.minasi.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23918

and this...

http://www.jaystech.com/2008/02/how-to-allow-user-to-format-pen-drive.html

amongst other things, all to no avail. This is driving me insane!!!

Any other ideas???

[seedubya]

Are these on a domain? If so I think you're mixing up local and domain rights. They will need local admin rights on the machine to install any kind of hardware. To get this run nusrmgr.cpl, supply an administrator username and password to access and add the domain user as a local admin. This only give them admin rights on the local machine but not on the domain.

[iladelf]

Seedubya, this laptop CAN join a domain, IF it is hooked up via network cable to the jacks on the college campus. So, any user can do that if they want to.

While the laptops can do this, we've really provided them so that users can login to the wireless internet hotspots provided on the campus; ergo, no domain connection there.

Here's how someone has to "logon" to this laptop in order to use the wireless network only on the campus:

user name: laptopuser
password: (the one we've provided)
log on to: BR549 (this computer)

Obviously, when connected via wired, the user name is a student or staff member, their password, and our domain.

Does that clarify things? Hope so.

[Bullfighter]

Just to clarify: You don't want the user in the LOCAL admin group? Or just not in the Domain Admin group?

If you don't mind having them in the Local admin group add the domain user to the local admin group. Even if they are not wired to the domain they can still log in with cached credentials when at a hotspot, thus giving them local admin and the ability to install the hardware.

(Which is what Seedubya was getting at, I believe)

EP