Getting ICQ to work with Windows 2000

Unless you do some tweaking, only members of the Administrators group will be able to use ICQ on your Windows 2000 system. Regular users are greeted with the following oh so helpful message:

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
    Runtime Error
    Program C:\Program Files\ICQ\Icq.exe
    abnormal program termination

If you want non-admins to be able to be able to use ICQ, you must do the following:

1. Create a new local group; I called mine Compatibility, but you could call yours ICQ Users or something else if you prefer more granularity. Add the users you want to be able to use ICQ ("User") to this group.
2. Install and run ICQ as an Administrator. Quit it.
3. Run Regedt32 and give the Compatibility group Full Control on the Registry key KKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mirabilis and all subkeys (via inheritance).
4. Give the Compatibility group Modify permissions on the ICQ folder in the Program Files folder.
5. Make the User into an Administrator.
6. Run ICQ's setup program as the User. Install ICQ again, as normal.
7. Make the User back into a normal user.

If you want each User to have separate settings then either make use of ICQ's built in multi-user settings (only effective if the Users configure ICQ to ask for a password when run), or when installing Icq for each of the Users, install it somewhere inside their profile folder (a separate copy for each of them).