What does it mean, Administrator?

Hi,

I've just noticed this worrying text from an official Microsoft KB article:

"If hotfixes for Visual Studio 2005 SP1 are released in the future, you
will be prompted for permission to install them. In Windows Vista,
permission is required in both the UI mode and the silent mode. If you
have to automate hotfix installation on Windows Vista, then you must
install hotfixes by using the Administrator account."

Can someone translate this into English, and can someone clarify what
they mean by "Administrator account"? Surely they don't mean the real
one that's been disabled? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the
much hyped UAC concept?

--
Gerry Hickman (London UK)

Gerry Hickman wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've just noticed this worrying text from an official Microsoft KB
> article:
> "If hotfixes for Visual Studio 2005 SP1 are released in the future,
> you will be prompted for permission to install them. In Windows Vista,
> permission is required in both the UI mode and the silent mode. If you
> have to automate hotfix installation on Windows Vista, then you must
> install hotfixes by using the Administrator account."
>
> Can someone translate this into English, and can someone clarify what
> they mean by "Administrator account"? Surely they don't mean the real
> one that's been disabled? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the
> much hyped UAC concept?

Borg jokes aside, Microsoft is not one giant living organism in and of
itself.

Just because the OS designers intend the machine to be used in a certain
way, that doesn't stop other teams doing things that ignore what the OS team
are trying to do. Perhaps that is what is happening here.

>> Gerry Hickman wrote:
>>
<snip>
>> Can someone translate this into English, and can someone clarify what
>> they mean by "Administrator account"? Surely they don't mean the real
>> one that's been disabled? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the
>> much hyped UAC concept?

They seem to be saying that if you want a silent installation to work
without prompting, then the process doing the installation must be started
with the built-in admin account or a system-level account, which won't throw
a UAC prompt.

This is fairly accruate. However, this doesn't require the user to be logged
in to the machine with the disabled-by-default built-in admin account, as
the text seems to imply. lol. You can do this using the deployment
capabilities of MSI:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de..._non-admin.asp

Or, if you are more of a do-it-yourself type, you can use scheduled tasks to
run programs with elevated privileges that do not ask the interactive user
for consent. Note that these privileged scheduled tasks are not displayed on
the user's screen - they cannot interact with these elevated tasks.

Basically, they are pointing out here that you have to do a little IT magic
in order to achieve a truely silent install.

> "Robert Moir" wrote:
<snip>
> Just because the OS designers intend the machine to be used in a certain
> way, that doesn't stop other teams doing things that ignore what the OS
> team are trying to do. Perhaps that is what is happening here.

It does seem that either not everyone at MS is aware of the "best practices"
for working in a UAC-restricted environment, or they are having a hard time
making these things clear


--
- JB

Windows Vista Support Faq
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/