Admin account not 100%?

Hello,

In Windows Vista, even though you are an administrator, programs that you
run do not automatically receive your administrator power. Only programs
that automatically ask for such power (through a "Windows needs your
permission" screen) receive admin power when you run them.

You are still a 100% administrator; however, programs that do not need to
use your administrator power and have no need for it will not receive it.
This makes your computer more secure. Also, since a program must receive
your consent before receiving your admin power, you know exactly which
programs are running with admin power, and you now have the ability to stop
a program from receiving admin power if you for some reason do not wish it
to have such power.

Some programs not designed for Windows Vista may need admin power without
requesting it. These programs will either not function correctly or will
complain about not having admin rights. You can manually give these programs
admin power by right-clicking them and clicking Run As Administrator.

If a program always needs admin power but does not ask for it, you can force
it to always run with admin power when it starts: right-click it, click
properties, click the compatability tab, and check 'Run this program as an
administrator'.

Optionally, you can choose to disable the enhanced features of the Windows
Vista admin accounts (called UAC or User Account Control), and have thing
work like they did in Windows XP, where all programs run with admin power,
even if they don't need it, and even if you do not know they are using it.
This is NOT recommended, as besides giving you control over how your admin
powers are used, UAC also enables other security features such as Internet
Explorer Protected Mode.

To disable UAC, go to the control panel, enter the User Accounts control
panel under User Accounts and Family Safety, click Turn User Account Control
on or off, and follow the directions.


--
- JB

Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/

On Fri, 1 Dec 2006 14:06:00 -0800, Chad wrote:

> I have an odd issue. First let me state that I did a successful upgrade from
> MCE 2005 to Vista RTM (official release, from MSDN). My username on the MCE
> 2005 setup was Chadi. It is also the same now in Vista, with "administrator"
> type account. However, I occasionally run into problems where Vista tells me
> I do not have administrator rights and need to login as administrator to do
> that task / function. Why am I being told this when my Chadi account is
> setup as administrator? I do end up logging out and logging in as
> Administrator (actual name of account). I'm lost on that, please explain how
> I can make my Chadi account 100% administrator entirely.

Under UAC, administrator accounts are "sandboxed." The prompts are your
ticket out of the sandbox and will allow completion of whatever
administrative task you've initiated.

When first setting up the system, you will see a lot of these. However,
once the bulk of your software is installed and configured, you will see
far less of them. While these prompts can be annoying if you're used to
running as admin in XP, the protection they provide is considerable.

--
Sharon F
MS-MVP ~ Windows Shell/User