Anyone know how to create another Windows environment with limited programs?

This would be relatively easy in xp, and I could probably talk you through it. I have vista on the laptop I am using right now, but my daw is xp. And I am waiting for my upgrade to windows7 to come in the mail, so I have spent zero time learning vista, knowing it would be a temporary inconvenience.

I said all that so that you would not take my suggestion as a form of "blowing you off", but I think the best idea would be to go to microsoft's home page, and check in their FAQ section. This situation has had to have come up recently, therefore someone from the microsoft team should have addressed this problem by now.

There are several "plugin" type apps available to limit start up programs for xp, they allow you to stop any programs from loading at start up. I would think that the "hacker" community, the people who live for circumventing anything windows develops just to prove they can, have already done the work and posted freebie apps on line. Maybe a shot at cdnet (I think that is the name) or just searching "downloads for free" might get you some results, but the microsoft home page would be my first thought.

Sorry, not much help, but maybe I could get an "A" for effort?

Later
Albert

The only problem with these solutions is that these would turn the programs off for any user. I'm more interested in setting up a separate user account where none of the extraneous stuff is running.

You can try Virtualization to run a clean copy of your operating system without internet connection or any other software just the OS.

Some products for Virtualization
Free
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox

Commercial
http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/
http://www.parallels.com/

Windows Help files will point you towards an easy to use Wizard for creating Hardware Profiles.