What setting in XP stops executables being run unless you're an administrator?

If I go to a workstation in a certain large organisation and try to run an executable from a USB drive it doesn't let me.

What setting is this in Group Policy or wherever else that does this?

I'd guess it's Software Restriction Policies.

For security reasons there may be a restriction on running executables from removable media. I suggest you talk to the system admins in that organisation to learn what you may or may not do.

There are many possibilities. Including, but not limited too the following.

• The application needs to write to the registry at places not permitted by the ACLs
• It need to write to the file-system at places not permitted by the ACLs
• It needs to load a kernel driver
• The system has policies in place to block certain executables (or usually block everything and permit good things).