Accelerated Reader Installation under Windows XP and 2000

Jerry Winegarden, Duke University
revised 2/15/05

This document assumes that you install Accelerated Reader (Renaissance Software) to the C: drive of each PC, with a common data location on a server providing Microsoft file service (either workgroup or domain). That server can be a PC with MS Windows 2000 or XP server, a PC with Linux and Samba file service as well as Appleshare file service for Macs, or a Macintosh with OS X server with Samba file service (as well as Appleshare). This document is specifically WinXP clients. Win 98/Me clients do not have the same problem as WinXP or 2000 clients, since they do not restrict access to folders on the C: drive based on a login name. Since WinXP/2000 clients require a login user name, users are included in groups, and by default, most users are classified as "restricted" (read only access to most folders on the computer), Accelerated Reader will not run for these general users since it requires updating preference files (e.g. data location), which by default do not have modify access for general restricted users. The purpose of this document is to specify the steps required to allow Accelerated Reader to run on an MS Windows XP Professional (or Win 2000) workstation when logged in as a general user, here assumed to be aruser, but can be anything, but must be a domain user. The information here is based on the information provided by Renaissance Software web site, from the following two WinXP AR client configuration documents:

However, there are a few details that are left out of those documents. This document intends to be a more complete cookbook.

As stated above, to run Accelerated Reader under Windows XP and 2000 as a regular unprivileged user, the default access privileges to particular folders on each workstation must be changed.

The steps are as follows (details will be provided later):

  1. Install Accelerated Reader, logged in as administrator on the local machine. The program files are installed to the folder: C:\AccReadr
  2. Register the data location by running AR Student (ARStu32) the first time, logged in as administrator on the local machine. This creates certain temp and preference files in C:\AccReadr and in C:\Windows (or C:\WinNT), which must have the access profiles changed. The data location is specified here, on the server. A valid username/password will be needed to access the database at the location on the server (e.g. aruser).
  3. Go to My Computer (or use Windows Explorer), to select the files and folders that need to be modified. Change the access for the group of users called "Users" to "Modify = Allow".
  4. Log in as a general domain user with access to the file share where the AR data is located (e.g. aruser). Run ARStu32 to test.

File list for access profile change