Administrator

[Alan T]

I installed Ultimate version recently and my user name is say 'Alan'. Do I
have the administrator right or am I an administrator?

 

[Marcin Domaslawski]

Hi,

Check:
Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts

Marcin Domaslawski

 

[Steve]

Check:
Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts

I read somewhere that for security reasons you should not routinely
login as administrator. Is that true?

 

[Marcin Domaslawski]

Hi,

Actually ... yes. It's connected with privilege of user who works as a
administrator. For example if you open IE and are logged as a administrator,
IE will work with your privileges and all child processes too. If an malware
code will be launched, it will have full rights to system.
However Vista has new feature - UAC - which protects you against that cases.
Even if you are administrator you havent full rights to installation or
execution untrusted codes.

Marcin Domaslawski

 

[Alan T]

Not quite understand.
I just installed Vista from scratch and was asked a username and password,
right.
The reboot Vista to logon using that account name and password.
Is that user account has admin rights? If yes, then I can run processes
which need admin rights, such that I can right click 'Run as administrator'
?

 

[Lang Murphy]

I read somewhere that for security reasons you should not routinely
login as administrator. Is that true?


--

The most important tool of the scientist is the wastebasket.

...Albert Einstein

Well... yes? No? I think that comes from the fact that when logged on as
administrator, one can really screw up a system if one doesn't know what one
is doing. And just about -everyone- thinks they know more than they really
do. That includes -some- MVP's and -most- of those who cast aspersions on
MVP's. (I belong to neither group, btw... and I'm not implying that I'm
incapable of screwing something up... oh, quite the contrary.)

Lang

 

[Marcin Domaslawski]

Hi,

That's right it depends on user. If on machne works only one user under
Vista, it doesnt matter if he will work on account with administrator
privilages or not. If he want install an "evil" then he will install it,
even if he will have to switch on proper account.
If you have few users, some of them will be trusted and some not, some
accounts for sure will be limited.

Marcin Domaslawski

 

[Guest]

Hi, I was wondering about this "run as administrator" thing. I recently had a
problem with downloading music from hmv using their download manager, which I
believe is an activeX program. The only solution (so far) to get the download
manager working (from another user on the discussion group) was to right
click the explorer icon and "run as admin..." Given that I'm the sole user
and logged in as administrator, what exactly does "run as admin" mean? Is it
anything to do with Defender, as well as user accounts? And, given that I'm
confident about the security of sites I visit (well-known companies and all
that), and have firewall/av/antispyware running, is "run as administrator" a
dangerous way to use explorer?
Thanks,
John.

 

[Lang Murphy]

Hi, I was wondering about this "run as administrator" thing. I recently
had a
problem with downloading music from hmv using their download manager,
which I
believe is an activeX program. The only solution (so far) to get the
download
manager working (from another user on the discussion group) was to right
click the explorer icon and "run as admin..." Given that I'm the sole user
and logged in as administrator, what exactly does "run as admin" mean? Is
it
anything to do with Defender, as well as user accounts? And, given that
I'm
confident about the security of sites I visit (well-known companies and
all
that), and have firewall/av/antispyware running, is "run as administrator"
a
dangerous way to use explorer?
Thanks,
John.

<snip>

Are you talking about Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer? If the latter,
which I suspect, well... I've never run IE as admistrator and am not aware
of a need to run IE as administrator. That said, I am not claiming to be an
IE SME. Obviously, if you had a problem that was addressed by running IE as
administrator, then there must be something to it.

And... all -that- said... is the download manager to which you refer hmv's
download manager? Or MS's IE download manager?

Lang

 

[Guest]

Hi Lang, Internet Explorer. The download manager is hmv's. I'm sure there's a
different way around the problem than "run as admin", but I haven't tackled
it yet and am not much experienced with configuring security settings,
especially in Vista. Cheers, John.

 

[Lang Murphy]

Hi Lang, Internet Explorer. The download manager is hmv's. I'm sure
there's a
different way around the problem than "run as admin", but I haven't
tackled
it yet and am not much experienced with configuring security settings,
especially in Vista. Cheers, John.

OK... well then the issue -may- be with hmv's d/l manager. Sorry, can't go
any further, right now, with that assessment. Not sure if one can assign
permissions to an activex control.

Good luck!

Lang