Running as a Power User

This past weekend I re-imaged my Tablet PC and vowed to run strictly as a power user. Thus far I have not had too many problems, but thought I would share the short list of issues I have encountered:

• Microsoft's AntiSpyware Beta does not appear to perform to well as a power user. It would not let me take the Imagine Cup IT quiz last night and then it also randomly displays ghost windows in the upper right hand corner of the screen. It also tends to leave ghost icons in the taskbar, earlier this morning there were 4 at one point in time.
• AOL Instant Messenger will not install unless you are an administrator. (I think this is because of the spyware they now package with their installation. Yes you can opt not to install it.) AIM also would not run this morning as a power user. When I attempt to run it, a process starts but nothing ever comes of the process. I am not sure what is up with this, but will look into it.
• I could not add a local printer earlier this morning. It turns out you need the, load and unload device drivers, rights to add a local printer. This was an easy fix.
• Adobe Acrobat also requires you to be an administrator. They actually prompt you with the Run As screen which is pretty cool, but I wish you didn't have to be an admin to install it.

Other then these minor things running as a power user has been going well. I will keep everyone informed of other issues I run into.

--Eric (Grand Valley State University)

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 17, 2005
  At least some of the products are aware of different account privelidges so that they can prompt you to obtain those privelidges. Several applications will either die or act weird if they just assumed administrative privelidges. Your printer issue is interesting because you can add a SMB/CIFS printer without extra privelidges, even as a limited user and it still causes driver installation in some cases.
• Anonymous
  January 17, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  January 17, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  January 17, 2005
  David
  
  That's great to hear. I love Keith's books, they have come in use many times.
  
  The only other thing I can't run as a power user is the Google Desktop Search :-(.
• Anonymous
  January 17, 2005
  You can run AOL Instant Messenger as normal user. just change the rights an the users registry key hive for AOL Instant Messenger.
  
  To know which key to change... visit sysinternals and launch regmon and you will know within a second.
  
  Seriously.. having quality tools like file and regmon makes configuring priviliges more easy.
• Anonymous
  January 17, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  February 04, 2005
  I have found that even for development i can actually run as a "user". I install everything using an Admin account, and then use a simple user account. There is no reason why most people need "power user". If you set evertying up with the admin.