w7 - Is this normal?

[VirusType2]

OK, I think I'm starting to figure this out.

I wanted to set up my pinball emulator program, so I put it in Program Files

Program Files -> Pinball -> Visual Pinball

It kept asking for admin privileges and then I started trying to unzip the tables into the folder and it just straight up failed at the unzip utility level. "Could not create output file".

So then I remembered this thread and it dawned on me. Put this ****ing program somewhere else.

So I put it in "Public", and it no longer asks me shit, and the program works fine. Is that a good place to put it, or should I put it in "users" or something?

I don't know what the shit anything is. I assume Public is a shared folder. Shared with anyone with an account? With my homegroup? Shared with the Internet? IDK!

So users is like a folder for each account, and since I'm using an admin account.. like, other users can't access the files or not? (I saw a little padlock on my account folder under users)

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

With steam, I'm talking about when you first download a game. It installs it, and then the first time you run the game, it will say it needs to be run on the admin account to finish the install. Which on my XP computer at work means I need to log off my user account, and log back in to admin, run the game, exit, log back out, log back into my user account and then the game will work. Which sucks. And if I have to do that every time on my own PC, it will suck even more because I install way more games.

You have to log in as admin to finish a Steam install?? wtf?

 

[Barney Fife]

Krynn, lemme put it this way. At first, when I was setting up Win7, I did it in the admin account. Installing games, drivers, apps and updates, etc, all while logged as an admin.
Each time I install something there two things I do:
1) To launch and see if app installed correctly. If it is a game, I'll launch it, configure it, start a new game, move couple of time, jump and shoot a weapon. If it is an app, I'll launch and do few very simple tasks.
2) I will go into "Property" then "security" and configure that software/game and give other accounts permission, so others can use it as well.
After I'm done setting up the OS, that is the last time I'm logged as an admin, unless I have to do maintenance and updates.
I hope you can see the picture.

Good Luck.

 

[Paulaner]

[...] And it is the way every computer user should run their computer, you should never run as an administrator. [...]

This is true in theory. In practice, from my experience as a IT professional, I tell you that life is very hard when you are not an administrator. I know, it's not the way it should be. Let me put it this way: the pain of running Windows with UAC overcomes its benefits. Just be a wise user and you'll be fine. Viruses and other malware doesn't care about UAC anyway.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

This is true in theory. In practice, from my experience as a IT professional, I tell you that life is very hard when you are not an administrator. I know, it's not the way it should be. Let me put it this way: the pain of running Windows with UAC overcomes its benefits. Just be a wise user and you'll be fine. Viruses and other malware doesn't care about UAC anyway.

So viruses and malware are able to circumvent the protections that UAC provides?

 

[Paulaner]

So viruses and malware are able to circumvent the protections that UAC provides?

Definitely yes. Do you really expect UAC to be the final solution to malware? It's just a safeguard to protect users against themselves

 

[No Limit]

This is true in theory. In practice, from my experience as a IT professional, I tell you that life is very hard when you are not an administrator. I know, it's not the way it should be. Let me put it this way: the pain of running Windows with UAC overcomes its benefits. Just be a wise user and you'll be fine. Viruses and other malware doesn't care about UAC anyway.

What are those pains? I haven't seen many lately. The only times I do see problems is when companies I contract for run proprietary software that tends to be outdated and not follow proper guidelines about windows permissions.

Krynn72, I'd love to help you out. But I get the feeling from you that you don't really want to be helped, you are on the mindset that you are right and everyone else isn't. In one sentence you say you will try it out since you really have nothing to lose and in the very next one you say that you wont since its not worth it. To answer your steam question, if you are running as a limited user with UAC on what will happen is under windows vista or windows 7 you will get a prompt asking you to put in your admin username and password, once you do that it will all work just fine. I really don't see how this is bothersome, it takes 2 ****ing seconds. You can also do what Barney described but that will take a few more minutes of effort on your part and that might be asking a bit too much.

So viruses and malware are able to circumvent the protections that UAC provides?

The way to answer that question is to explain what UAC is and what it isn't. Malware or viruses have no magical power to get around the UAC prompt. So malware has one of 2 options to get you. The easier being to install the virus in your local profile. When that happens it seems like UAC failed you when really it didn't, it did its job. When a virus only affects your local profile it leaves your system untouched and removal is extremely easy. The second option the virus has is to trick you to click allow when the prompt comes up. That means if you think by clicking on "allow" you will get free asian porn UAC won't really help you. So the answer is no, a virus can't get around UAC. But UAC is not virus protection and a virus could still get you with UAC using the methods I described, none of which circumvents what UAC actually does.

 

[No Limit]

OK, I think I'm starting to figure this out.

....

I don't know what the shit anything is. I assume Public is a shared folder. Shared with anyone with an account? With my homegroup? Shared with the Internet? IDK!

So users is like a folder for each account, and since I'm using an admin account.. like, other users can't access the files or not? (I saw a little padlock on my account folder under users)

Exactly. Windows has various areas. In theory a regular user should only have write access to very few areas. The users folder being one of them. If your user profile is called VirusType you will have unlimited access to the VirusType folder under users. That includes your desktop, my documents, music, local application settings and data, etc, etc. You also have a public folder which can be access by all users on your computer. Other than that everything is off limits for writing unless you elevate your privledges as needed. Keep in mind that for reading files you should be able to read most of your other areas in your computer, including Program Files, the C drive, etc you just cant write (or make changes) to it.

 

[Krynn72]

Krynn72, I'd love to help you out. But I get the feeling from you that you don't really want to be helped, you are on the mindset that you are right and everyone else isn't. In one sentence you say you will try it out since you really have nothing to lose and in the very next one you say that you wont since its not worth it.

I AM right and everyone else IS wrong. But that doesnt mean that I am right and everyone else is wrong.

I'm actually pretty interested in this, since i didn't know how easy it was for viruses to take over in spite of virus protection software. Frankly, its never occurred to me that i should still be running as a user despite being the only person using my pc. I'm just a jerk who likes to make everything difficult for fun. My custom title that a moderator here gave me should say it all really.

To answer your steam question, if you are running as a limited user with UAC on what will happen is under windows vista or windows 7 you will get a prompt asking you to put in your admin username and password, once you do that it will all work just fine. I really don't see how this is bothersome, it takes 2 ****ing seconds. You can also do what Barney described but that will take a few more minutes of effort on your part and that might be asking a bit too much.

Is that for running the game the first time? Or every time? And I'd obviously need to log out of my account and back in as administrator to install all my games and every other app... right? Or can I just run the installer as administrator while on my user account? I'm not familiar with this at all, as you can tell.

Is there a way to allow certain programs to write whenever they want? When I do work at home, i need to use lots of software that I'm thinking will need to write somewhere it won't be allowed to, which may cause problems with saving preferences and etc.

 

[No Limit]

It will only ask you when you install, not each time you go to run the game.

The way to give a program admin all the time is to right click on it and select run as administrator. If you dont want to right click each time under the program properties under the compatability tab you can check "always run as administrator". However, if you know where the program needs to write to you can simply give your user account permission to that file and/or folder.

 

[PvtRyan]

With steam, I'm talking about when you first download a game. It installs it, and then the first time you run the game, it will say it needs to be run on the admin account to finish the install. Which on my XP computer at work means I need to log off my user account, and log back in to admin, run the game, exit, log back out, log back into my user account and then the game will work. Which sucks. And if I have to do that every time on my own PC, it will suck even more because I install way more games.

Well, that's precisely what UAC is for. That's what you have to do on XP, because you can't give yourself temporarily elevated privileges. That's exactly what UAC does. As a normal user under Vista or Seven, you just get a prompt whenever you need elevated privileges, under XP, you have to log off and log in again as an administrator.

Only annoyance I've had so far is that I recently bought BF2 in the Christmas sale and you have to run it as an administrator (as in: log off and log in as administrator). But that's entirely the fault of the game, the same for all other UAC related problems.