I occasionally get errors from Windows 7 saying administrator rights is required when installing some programs. Well, I am the administrator. My friend is also having similar problems. Could somebody reference a link or thread which maybe gives the lowdown on the Win 7 admin/user issues and related confusion? Sometime it claims I don't have admin rights but it ends up doing the process anyway, or right clicking then using 'run as administrator' executes ok. What is going on? I'd like to understand, not just find a go-around. I'm sure others would like to know too. Thanks

They keyword is UAC - User Account Control, a security feature introduced starting with Windows Vista.

http://www.tweak-uac.com/what-is-uac/

Prepare for a lengthy discussion on this topic

Everybody get ready... steady... go!

Worth a read:

How to get Admin rights in Vista/Windows 7.

Ok, thanks to the above two references I understand the concept of two levels of Administers and the validity of this safeguard. And I understand the suggested tweaking.

BUT, given the tens of millions of new Windows 7 users coming, is it expected each (even the most novice) is to deal with escalation issues and the remedies mentioned? No way. There is more to this I believe, or what am I missing?

I didn't give much thought to UAC until a few months ago when I picked up a trojan that stayed dormant on my system for a few days and then installed some crap turning it into a web server. I've since tightened up via UAC settings. Pain in the arse to have to deal with the "allow this program to make changes to the computer?" dialog all the time, but oh well.

The feature was introduced with Windows Vista, so it's not new.

Most users don't like it, because they find it annoying, which it probably is. The problem is that as a user you HAVE TO deal with security, and you HAVE TO have some awareness of what is going on on your PC security-wise. There are similar techniques (albeit technically different more effective) in place on other operating systems (OSX, Linux, etc) - on those systems your user account basically NEVER has full administrator (root) privileges by default.

My take on that matter is the following:

I don't recommend disabling that feature, on the contrary, set it to the highest security level (otherwise it is basically useless because malware can easily find ways around it)

Deal with the prompts, they are annoying, but that's the way it is, and honestly, it is not THAT bad - just remember that one of the major security flaws of Windows (especially XP) was/is that the standard user usually works with full administrator privileges. So while Windows XP was of course so much more convenient, it was also so much more flawed security wise.

Only older software that has not been adapted to work with UAC will give you troubles and require to be 'run as administrator'. Current installer packages will allow Windows to handle elevation prompts correctly.

Many applications still go the easy way and require elevation upon program start. This is considered bad practice for security reasons. For instance file operations executed by this program (either programmatically or by user interaction) might 'harm' the system because they have full access to the whole system including important system files. And any vulnerability in the program might be used by an attacker (e.g. malware) to attack and infect the system.

The better way is to ask for elevation only when the program actually executes the action that requires elevation. The better a software / application distinguishes between 'normal' actions and 'administrator' actions (that require elevation), the better. Have a look at the Task Manager (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC) - it will not prompt for elevation upon start, but if you hit the 'show all processes' button, it will do.

Most applications should run without elevation, and if you are using a mundane application that requires elevation for no good reason, you might actually try to avoid it.

So I guess Microsoft's plan is to educate users as well as software developers in regards to account privileges and security. My personal opinion is that Microsoft will further tighten and strengthen Windows security in future versions of Windows, and this is just an intermediate step.

welo

Great points Welo. It did in fact involve the installation/use of non-current software, which I only rarely installed. Oh, this was a problem with using an older version Aircard -- needed elevation to install and I had no idea what that even meant much less how to elevate. BTW, the turkey never did work under 7 so I bought a new AIS which worked like crap in Lopburi where AIS 3G signals (in actuality 2G) were often too weak for whatever reason.

Old software explains my friend's frustrations. She stubbornly refuses to give up (without a fight) old applications she used for years. It was the installation of those which were problematic.