i cannot even creat a guest account my other accounts cannot change any settings even though they are logged on as administrators1 person needs an answerI do too

You don't want to enable Guest in any case. It is a system account and not meant to be used normally. As for the issue: The First Question Of Troubleshooting: If the problem is new, what changed between the time things worked and the time they didn't? The Second Question of Windows Troubleshooting: what is the malware/virus status of the machine? If you think it is clean, what programs (and versions) did you use to determine this? Be sure the computer is clean: http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_MalwareMS-MVP - Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!

been going on for sometime finally created another acct for the girlfriend even in that acct we cannot change even the background color, font size etc. it is an "adminitrator" acct dont think it is malware....have run spybot, malwarebytes, security essential, windows defnder for a long time when I create a guest acct, the icon is there, but clicking on it does nothing mostly I would like to be able to set up the desktop in the second acct, make changes etc. XP SP3 installed

And you can't remember what changed between the time things worked and the time they didn't? It's hard to pinpoint the reason then. You might want to run the System File Checker and if that doesn't work, do a repair install. Start>Run>sfc /scannow [OK] Make sure your data is backed up before doing a repair install (or in any case, really). http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm">http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm If neither of those things works, perhaps you should test your hardware. It's really difficult to be more specific without knowing more about the machine. http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot MS-MVP - Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!