help with getting Guest user to connect to internet please :)

[home102938]

Hi all  
Just wandered if anyone amongst you friendly lot could "guide" me through some, I suppose, basics of setting up an internetet connection for user who logs in as a Guest on my computer.  

I am expecting relatives visiting soon and after last year's experience (ended up with odd downloaded and installed programs!) I would prefer to give them a limited use/access to my computer.  Basically all I want is for the guest to be able to log in to internet to get their mail. Otherwise give no access to making any changes in software and system.
I have Vista operating system on my computer.

So far I noticed that after turning computer on I have 2 log in options Admin and Guest.

Went to the Guest area but when I click on the ISP dial up connection icon all I get is" My ISP can not be found"  (I am on an old style dial up ADSL - as not too kin on having internet on when I don't use it).
Had a little look around if there is anything obvious (to me   ) that I can do to set it up but it didn't jump at me, so would be grateful for directions. Sorry if its already explained on the forum somewhere but search did not return much on the issue that I need.

So far I ticked all users to allow connection in Administrator's mode; - nothing changed in Guest settings
Opened Connection wizard as Guest and got to "windows did not detect any networking hardware" (and yet everything is connected)
Restarted computer in hope that changes will be processed - nothing  

I do realise that its probably quite simple thing to do but as I never had to do it I am not familiar with user accounts  

Wishing you all a nice weekend
Stephanie the Hometinker  

[Steve]

Apologies I use a Mac so can't be too specific. As I understand it in Windows a guest can only use an existing connected network connection. One trick would be to enable fast user switching (if that's what it still called) connect to the internet with an admin user account and then 'switch' to the guest account.

Edit: I think switch user is enabled in vista by default.

[home102938]

Thanks Steve,
Have to admit that " network connection" sounds a bit unfamiliar, unless its something that is automatically set up when first Internet connection set up is done (?)

Tried that user switch. Logged in as Admin, connected to internet, switched users - no sign of Internet connection as Guest. And in any way - my visitors will be left "home alone" so that option would have limited use even if it worked.
Thanks for replying  
Stephanie

[.Griff.]

Instead of using the "Guest" user account create a new "Standard user" account for them to use.

That should allow them to use the existing connection and the account can be deleted once they've left.

If you wanted to you can then assign parental controls to that account and specify what you want them to be able to do.

The standard account can help protect your computer by preventing users from making changes that affect everyone who uses the computer, such as deleting files that are required for the computer to work. We recommend creating a standard account for each user.

When you are logged on to Windows with a standard account, you can do almost anything that you can do with an administrator account, but if you want to do something that affects other users of the computer, such as installing software or changing security settings, Windows might ask you to provide a password for an administrator account.

[home102938]

Wow,
Griff - it sounded simple, it was simple and it worked  thank you so much.  Perhaps next time I shuldn't be so ambitious looking for solutions for hours and just ask those "who know"  I suppose I do not like to appear lazy so try to find answers myself in the first instance 
Good night All
S.

[.Griff.]

No problem at all. Glad it helped! 

[Simon]

Nice one, Griff.