I am running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. I run the computer as "Administrator" for my everyday tasks. I have it fully configured to fit what I want. In my MCDST book it says the "Administrator" account is not meant for everyday use. I want to know why not. Is it slower than other accounts? Is it less secure? What is the reason it is not best for everyday tasks. I can make another account to use if I need to, but I don't particularly want to deal with changing all my settings on another account. If there is a reason I shouldn't use the "Administrator" account then is there a way to move all of my settings from this account to another one? I've been reading in this MCDST book about user profiles and copying the profile from the "Administrator" account to another one sounds feasable, but I bet there are some propretary settings in the profile that would need some serious modifications to make it work. I know it wouldn't hurt to try, but I'd ask before I did it.
It is true that administrator accounts are less secure because thats why most virus attacks happen when someone is using it! If you create a separate account with alot less access and rights and use that nowhere near as many virii will attack you as they cant access the more important services! And it will run slightly faster as their isnt as many services/programs running in the background!
Administrator account is secured and also it is meant for back ups and recovery. If things goes wrong and if u mess up something in the admin account then it is diffcult for the back up and recovery.
Actually, both posts are wrong in many ways. The intention of the administrator account is for system maintenance such as software installation, account manipulation, defragmentation and even setting the PC clock. However, in Windows NT (including XP: It's actually NT v5.1), many programs expect administrative privileges just to function properly. This coupled with the relatively low security even in less-privileged 'user' accounts makes the user privilege separation in the NT family all but worthless for a single-user environment. The only time it shows any merit is in IT-managed environments like large offices, where IT staff fill the 'administrator' role. The bottom line is that a lack of admin rights does little to slow the spread of an aggressive virus, doesn't prevent long-term registry corruption, and usually only serves to frustrate the user. Unix-based systems have a much more eloquent way of handling user privilege seperation. I won't get into that, except to say that it actually works, yet it leaves the user feeling unrestricted to manage the settings in their own accounts. Hope this has been helpful... -AT
Thanks AT. If I mad another account it would have Administrator rights anyways so I guess it doesn't matter. And yea, I have a Linux computer and the separatoin of privalages is much better, but because the world is so MS centered I can't go without it sometimes.
I certainly can understand that. From what I've heard though, Windows Vista is going to have better user privilege seperation than any previous version. (...of course, it was also supposed to have the WinFS filesystem, so I'll believe it when I see it.) All the best, -AT
