That has become a major source of problems in my household. I don't live with my girlfriend and her 4 kids (my stepkids, I'm not disowning them, just explaining quickly the situation). Youngest son has a PC, and due to experience gained with the older son (now 18), his account is locked down and I'm the admin on the system.

I often have to use TeamViewer to access the PC to allow Fortnite to upgrade, and they don't understand why I still insist on this - my warning about just about all the possible negatives have been completely ignored, but I'm sticking to my guns. I know I'm fighting a losing battle and eventually will have to give up on this, but at the moment, it's working. I'm sure most people have given up, made the kid and admin and the computer is awash with issues as a result.

Obviously if I'm not available (which is often the case as I'm self employed in a number of roles, most of which mean I can't be available instantly), then it has to wait, and you'd think the world was ending!

Would a possible solution be to buy them a more locked down system like a nintendo switch or an ipad and tell them if they want to play a game they either use that or the non-admit user on the PC?

You can't compare iPad and switch games to the ones on pc. They are totally different.

Literally the game they talked about (Fortnite) is available on both iOS and Switch. Anyway when I was a kid I only cared about having good games to play (and even the "good" part is debatable), not which specific games - there's plenty of great stuff to play on the switch.

> Anyway when I was a kid I only cared about having good games to play

This was generally true for me too, but in 2019 games are primarily a social hangout spot. They're like a park or a concrete basketball court next to the parking lot, where the kids come hang out and shoot the shit in the lobby even if they aren't actively in a match.

Not being on the same game your mates are playing is akin to telling your kid "you can't go to your friends' park 30 minutes away, why don't you hang out in our perfectly nice backyard with a basketball hoop"

Edit: upvote for the rest of your comment though

The the kids mess up the machine and keep the recovery option close at hand. Tell them to store everything they care about (homework) in Google Drive, Dropbox, or the like.

The solution my friend's had with their kids is only the parents knew the passwords. Serving as perpetual gatekeepers would be exasperating, but it was effective.

Does windows not have something like the setuid bit on Unix? I guess even if it did expecting parents to know about that is probably asking a bit much.