Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

It's painful! It is. And on top of that, it is painful! But the following resources do help:
- Developing Software in Visual Studio .NET with Non-Administrative Privileges
- How can I run Control Panel applets as another user (one with administrative privileges)? (See the additional links at the bottom)
- Run Using a Least-Privileged Account

Published Wednesday, July 14, 2004 4:06 PM by yvesdolc

Comments

# Check out this entry

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 9:17 PM by Deep Thoughts...

# re: I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 7:00 PM by Bill
I've been developing as a non-admin for about a month now using the advice given by Andy Margosis' in his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2004/07/07/175488.aspx

It hasn't been too painful using his suggestions.

# re: I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 7:08 PM by Yves Dolce
I knew people would point me to more resources.
Thanks Richard and Bill!

# re: I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:26 AM by David Cottrill
I've been running Win2k as admin for about three years. I run software from trusted sources and use Sygate to block all incoming/outgoing connections that I haven't specifically approved. So far, this has not caused me a single problem. Obviously, this wouldn't be a good idea for a server, but for a desktop/dev box, the risks are acceptable to me.

I understand the ramifications, but there are too many programs (not malicious, just poorly-coded) that assume they are running on an admin account (or on Win95/98). If you just use RunAs to run all your software as admin, then you've defeated the purpose, which means you've got to *figure out* which programs need to be run as admin and which don't. Who has the time?

In Linux, I run under a regular user account and su when I need admin privileges. This is feasible because Linux software is nearly always designed with consideration for the difference between root and user accounts (i.e., only the programs that *should* be run as root will require you to do so).

# RE: I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:56 PM by Random .NET Ramblings

# RE: I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

Thursday, July 15, 2004 2:39 PM by Random .NET Ramblings

# [Developer] I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

Friday, July 16, 2004 12:16 PM by システム管理な雑記 -- Sleeve notes of a sysadmin --
[Developer] I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

# [Developer] I quit running as an administrator on my new box!

Friday, July 16, 2004 1:57 PM by システム管理な雑記 -- Sleeve notes of a sysadmin --
[Developer] I quit running as an administrator on my new box!
Anonymous comments are disabled
 
Page view tracker