Defrag permissions

[Nate Weldon]

Is there any way I can grant power users the right to
defrag their hard drive? Seems kind of rediculous that you
have to be an admin to do this, as I have 50 computers and
I can't go and log into each users' PC every time they
need to defrag. I also work for a company that won't pony
up the loot to buy an automated solution. I've tried the
autodefrag program but ended up with only limited success.
Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)]

Is there any way I can grant power users the right to
defrag their hard drive? Seems kind of rediculous that you
have to be an admin to do this, as I have 50 computers and
I can't go and log into each users' PC every time they
need to defrag. I also work for a company that won't pony
up the loot to buy an automated solution. I've tried the
autodefrag program but ended up with only limited success.
Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Hi

If you want to run defrag while you are logged in as a power user,
here are a couple of workarounds that might work:

A)
Put defrag.exe in a scheduled task running under an administrator account.


B)
If it is an requirement that the (non-admin) user must be able to start the
defrag utility manually at will, this might work as well:

Create a service that runs defrag.exe when started using
srvany.exe/instsrv.exe:
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

Then grant the users rights to start the service (to start defrag.exe):

HOW TO: Grant Users Rights to Manage Services in Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;288129

 

[Greg Stigers]

There is the business case that can be made for the cost of the utlity,
versus impact on productivity (you can find studies which show that slower
systems dramatically and disproportionately hurt productivity, by causing
interruptions in tasks which ought to be performed without interruption) and
cost to an administrator.

A KB article on defragging is "Running Windows Disk Defragmenter Requires
Administrator Privileges" at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;231176&Product=win2000. I
wonder if you could give users local administrative privileges on just their
workstations? That is not without its problems, of course, and takes time
and effort to implement, although I bet there are some clever scripts to
accomplish this.

Another work-around would be to use remote control on XP workstations, or
NetMeeting on 2000 workstations. At least you would not have to be there
physically. Of course, these remote sessions do cost workstation resources,
and your users will likely be able to notice the impact on system response.

Problems like this make it easy to understand Scott Adam's success, as we
look at how companies will waste time and salary to avoid capital
investments in tools to get the job done.