Admin rights from User account

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Byrne
  • Start date Start date
B

Bob Byrne

Hi,
I know how to use 'run as' from a User account but how can
I change network settings. I need to access the property sheet
of Net connections as an Admin from a user account.
Eg. to access the Advanced tab to turn on/off the XP firewall.
 
Walter Clayton said:
You don't. You log in as an admin class user.
Click to expand...

Pity. Microsoft advise you not to use the Net as an Admin but
don't give you the tools to change settings from a User account.
I find that strange.
I'm about to re-install from scratch and switch over to NTFS but
this time I'll have to take my chances and just use an Admin account.
 
That's what fast user switching is about however. ;-)

If you need to adjust a setting, just fast switch to an admin account log it
out then back on to the restricted account. No fuss, no muss, no bother. And
the limited account need never log out unless the change requires a system
restart.

--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://support.microsoft.com/servicedesks/fileversion/default.asp
 
Walter Clayton said:
That's what fast user switching is about however. ;-)
.....
Click to expand...

Tried that once but if it didn't crash my PC it presented me with about
5 copies of the same programs running at once.
I can access 'run as' with just about everything through Control Panel.
You have to use it to access Windows Update, no problem so surely
there must be a way to access the Properties of connectoids in
Network Connections.
Maybe there is access through Administrative Tools.
 
Admin tools can only really be used by admin class accounts.

If you're crashing when hot switching to a different account then you've
constrained the swapfile and/or you're running apps that don't play well
with the function. I have one app that complains but that's controllable and
I choose not to deal with it since it's a non-issue. If you have multiple,
then it's time to evaluate a bit.

--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://support.microsoft.com/servicedesks/fileversion/default.asp
 
Walter Clayton said:
Admin tools can only really be used by admin class accounts.
Click to expand...

I know and I can use all of them from a User account using 'run as'.
Maybe I'm missing something here but isn't that the point of 'run as'.
You don't have to switch accounts.
Let me give an example why I want this function.
I recently had a problem with Net access and rang support. They
suggested I change some settings but this wasn't possible so I
had to switch to my Admin account. No problem except I've rarely
used the Admin account online for obvious reasons and as such IE
and OE are set up totally different to the User account and don't
reflect those settings.
 
Still not a problem. Network oriented changes done by an admin account are
applied globally. It doesn't matter if IE and OE are configured differently
for each user. The are applications that sit on top of the TCP stack. No
more and no less. The network connectiod and how it's configured is
identical and that's the crux of the issue that you started with. You can
literally hot switch, disable the firewall, log off and switch back to see
the effects. However, you're also going about things incorrectly. An admin
account is used for configuring and debugging issues. It's perfectly normal
to log out all users, log on with an admin class user,
configure/troubleshoot and then if necessary propagate any actual user level
changes to users with lesser rights. Or if you want, log out, log in as
admin temporarily and grant your normal logon admin privileges, do the
thing, the switch things back. This is basically how things are normally
done. "Run as.." tends to present some security issues the way you seem to
be using. Unless you're prompting for the password, then you've stored it in
plain text on the machine somewhere. And that's a whole lot of prompting
going on. Literally, you shouldn't be using anything less than an admin
class account to configure the machine just to insure that all the requisite
and related changes are fully propagated.

--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://support.microsoft.com/servicedesks/fileversion/default.asp
 
Walter Clayton said:
....... However, you're also going about things incorrectly. An admin
account is used for configuring and debugging issues. It's perfectly normal
to log out all users, log on with an admin class user,
configure/troubleshoot and then if necessary propagate any actual user level
changes to users with lesser rights. ........
Click to expand...

I see your point and I agree, I've been going about things the wrong way in
that I've been using my Admin a/c as a user a/c as well. When I first set up
XP I wasn't on the Net and didn't create a User a/c until late in the piece.
The problem I am finding hardest to deal with is there are quite a lot of
programs that can only be configured/updated from an Admin a/c. I've
found that this isn't a flaw in XP but simply bad programming.
Thanks for your feedback and help.
 
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