Cannot open a browser

[canooten]

I have a friends laptop (Vista Home Premium) that cannot keep an IE window open. Click the icon, the browser opens for a split second and immediately closes. I found that right click, run as administrator opens it with no issues.

I reset IE back to default settings. No luck. Installed Mozilla to see if it's an IE issue and that will not open either. Does not even pop the window up....click the icon and the cursor changes momentarily like it's going to open, then stops. Process is not running in background and run as admin does not work for Firefox. The only way I can get that to open is to set it as default browser and trigger a page to open through another program.

I created a new user account thinking it could be something with the account, but it does the same thing on the new account.

This is my first real dealing with a Vista machine, so I'm sure there's something I'm missing. Any suggestions?

 

[KSoD]

The accounts created do not have Admin rights. Since it opens with the Run As Admin and works that would mean that the accounts in use do not have the sufficent rights to run the progrmas by themselves.

Change their security levels. This is done via the control panel.

 

[canooten]

Original account is an administrator account and IE has worked fine up until recently.

I understand what you're saying that since the "run as" link is there, it stand to reason it's not an admin account, but that and the one I set up for testing are admin accounts and this is still showing with a right click.
Are there different levels of admin in Vista?

 

[KSoD]

The accounts created during the Vista install is NOT a admin account. It is a power user account with Admin rights. The Admin account is hidden.

 

[canooten]

OK, so how do I change the rights? Sorry...Vista newbie.

 

[KSoD]

As i said. Go into the control panel. Go under User Accounts. There you should see the options to change the user account type.

 

[canooten]

Thanks...I'll take a look at it tonight.

 

[canooten]

As i said. Go into the control panel. Go under User Accounts. There you should see the options to change the user account type.

...and the only options are standard and administrator (I understand the Vista administrator does not grant full admin rights like XP and earlier). Accounts are administrator, so unless I'm in the wrong place, I'm not getting it

 

[KSoD]

Try creating a new user account with Admin rights. See if that does anything.

 

[kmote]

I have seen similar behaviour on an infected xp machine. I can't remember what it had but you could try a virus scan etc.