I saw a good post on one of the MSDN blogs. When you are an administrator,
but not THE administrator, logged into Vista you are really a split
personality and have two log ins at the same time. Normally everything you
do is with the normal user login, but after UAC confirmation, you are logged
in with the other identity. This means that COM installed in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER is not accessible and neither are network drive mappings
you had in the normal user environment, except in one case where the OS may
transfer one when an error occurs.
How do you explain this to your techno-phobe parents, children, brothers,
and sisters? Since you love the long explanations for everyone, I guess
they will get longer. Might be interesting to explain it, but I sure don't
want to do so.
"Jimmy Brush" <JimmyBrush@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:28437CF0-DA25-4890-BB0E-0D28B75D3D33@microsoft.com...
> Hello,
>
> In Windows Vista, even though you may be an administrator, the programs
> that you run CANNOT use your admin power unless they ask for it (via a
> "Windows needs your permission to continue" prompt) or you explicitly give
> them admin power (by right-clicking the application and clicking Run As
> Administrator).
>
> Above that, Internet Explorer runs with BELOW "NORMAL" rights by default -
> called protected mode - where it doesn't even have standard user rights.
>
> Try right-clicking the file and clicking Run As Administrator; if it
> installs from within IE7, run iexplore.exe as administrator.
>
>
> --
> - JB
> Microsoft MVP - Windows Shell/User
>
> Windows Vista Support Faq
> http://www.jimmah.com/vista/