global changes to mouse & sound caused by creating a Guest account?

Ein · 30 Apr 2016

A few days ago I went to the control panel and enabled the built-in Guest account for the first time. I quickly logged out/logged in to switch over to the guest account, then I switched back to my main account. This apparently caused my mouse to behave differently -- I immediately felt like the sensitivity had been cranked up, although I suspect it is entirely the acceleration that is acting differently. I went to the control panel mouse settings and checked the sensitivity level and enhanced precision setting. These were still identical to the mouse settings I had always used.

About a day later I also noticed that my sound was different. When I went to continue editing a video that I had been working on for weeks (and thus was intimately familiar with), I immediately thought that the bass in the music track was louder. I also noticed the same phenomena with a website I frequently visit to generate white noise. To the best of my knowledge I couldn't find a place in the control panel or in my sound card software that lets you adjust the system-wide equalizer or anything like that.

Is there an explanation behind this, or am I just crazy to think enabling the guest account caused global changes?

LMiller7 · 30 Apr 2016

I have no explanation for what you experienced. But it is inconceivable to me that enabling the Guest account could do this. This account has privileges lower than that of any other account and cannot make any system wide changes.

I would be looking for some other explanation.

Ein · 30 Apr 2016

Yeah, it is definitely not something done from the Guest account itself (like adjusting a setting), because I didn't even try to adjust anything. If the Guest account was related it would have to be the act of enabling and logging into the Guest account. The mouse thing was apparent when I first switched to the Guest account. All I recall doing was opening the web browser and closing it to go back to my main account.

Edit:
Another detail I recall was that once I went to the mouse settings in the control panel, I tried changing the settings just to experiment and then I clicked "Apply". The dialog window became unresponsive, and I opted to give it a few minutes to finish doing whatever it was doing. The same happened when I switched the settings back, but it doesn't do that anymore.