Java socket connection does not work in Vista

[Sam Lalani]

We have customers who can run our Java Web Start application using Windows Vista, XP, MacOS, and most flavors of Linux. However, a handful of customers running Vista are having problems. They are able to get the program to come up, but the program is unable to connect to the server using a socket connection. One of the customers has an E-machine, and we reinstalled his OS, did NOT install his anti-virus, and turned off the firewall. The problem still existed where TELNET connected to the server but the Java program did not. The login used has administrator privileges. However, when we enabled the hidden administrator account and logged in using that account instead of the user with administrator privileges, the program works fine.

Any thoughts?

[Aum Tao]

There is a different between the built-in administrator and the default administrator account created during Vista setup.

You can enable this for your purpose by running the "Command" program as an administrator, followed by
net user administrator /active:yes

[Sam Lalani]

Thank you for your response.

I guess my post was not clear. We DID run the 'net user' command to enable the hidden administrator account and the program DID run fine when the customer logged in using that account. However, the customer does not want to use that administrator account; he wants to use his user account that has administrator privileges so that he has access to all his programs, data, and icons that he has installed. From everything I have read, it is not a good idea to be logged in as this hidden administrator.

So my questions were:

1. Why is our Java Web Start application able to open a socket connection to our server when the user is logged in as the hidden administrator, but not able to open a socket when using a user account which has administrator privileges? Note that this is the case even when Vista was reinstalled from scratch and no anti-virus programs or firewalls were turned on.

2. What privileges does the hidden administrator account have that a regular user account with administrator privileges does not have?

Thanks.