How to Create a Password Login For ArcView 3x

If you want to require users to login with a password before being able to use ArcView here’s a simple way.

Difficulty Level: Easy    Time Required: 1 minute

1. Go to your \esri\av_gis30\arcview\etc directory.
2. Locate a file called startup (no file extension shown).
3. Make a copy of this file and rename it startup.old (it’s always wise to make copies of essential files before altering them).
4. Open up the startup file and copy and paste the code from steps 5 and 6 at the top of the file:
5. authenticated=FALSE attempts=0 while (NOT authenticated) thePassword=MsgBox.Password if (thePassword=”password”) then authenticated=TRUE else
6. MsgBox.Warning(“Invalid Password!”,”") attempts=attempts+1 if (attempts=3) then authenticated=TRUE av.Quit end end end
7. Change “password” to the password of your choice.
8. Save the file.
9. Test the login by starting up ArcView.
10. Test the authenticating by entering the login false 3 times – notice that it won’t let you into ArcView if you don’t enter the proper password.
11. You’re done!