Running as non-Admin sucks? Not for me, it doesn't...
Posted
Saturday, April 12, 2003 12:16 PM
by
G Andrew Duthie
Samer
writes:
Ok let's be honest here... Running as non-Admin ABSOLUTELY SUCKS. There is
no doubt about this one. I've been on the
running as non-Admin kick on my home machine for a while and quite
honestly it's
not easy. We're all used to the "god powers" on our machines. Running as
non-Admin you are more like a peasant than a god. I find myself having to
switch back and forth between account ALL the time. I have some setup
somethings setup as "run as" according to Raj
Chaudhuri's recommendations (look in the comments). That makes it easier
but hell running as non-Admin is still hard and not everything works. Andrew
is right however. Running as non-Admin teaches you not to cheat as a
programmer and security issues you never knew existed. Follow Andrew, Anil,
and Keith's recommendation but dont fool yourself into thinking it's easy.
It's not.
[Samer Ibrahim]
I just have to disagree somewhat with the "ABSOLUTELY SUCKS" part. I'm not
sure what, if anything Samer is doing that I'm not, but I just don't find
running as a non-admin to suck even a little. Just for the record, though, I
don't think I ever said it was easy. There are a few inconveniences I've
noticed, which include:
- You can't conveniently run Windows Explorer as an admin, so changing ACL
requires either using XP fast user-switching to switch over to an admin login
long enough to change the ACLs, or using CACLS from a command line opened
using Run As...
- Norton Antivirus cannot successfully run LiveUpdate from a non-admin
account (how stupid is THAT?), so in order to update your virus definitions,
you have to switch over to an admin login session (though I think you might
also be able to run LiveUpdate standalone using Run As... I'll have to try
that next time). What's particularly irritating about this is that LiveUpdate
pops up automatically at specified intervals, trys to run, but fails to
properly install the updates. Guess what? This software was almost certainly
written by someone running as Admin, which highlights why it's so important
for developers not to do this.
I'd love it if everyone who has tried/is trying this could post a list of the
things that they've run into that "don't work", and any workarounds they have.
The more we can build up a knowledgebase of how to make running as a non-admin
work, the more likely it is that folks will do it, rather than
think that they can't do it.