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what account do you use in Win XP. Administrator or User?


Grig182

what account do you use in Win XP. Administrator or User?  

462 members have voted

  1. 1. what account do you use in Win XP. Administrator or User?

    • User
      101
    • Administrator
      347
    • I don't use Win XP
      10


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Voted for the second option. I manage my own computer and I don't see a point of adding a "guest" or "limited user" account on my computer. I even let my brother and sister use my account and its too much hassle just to type in your own account password at the startup.

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I always logon with an ordinary User account. If I need to do "admin things", there's always Run As or as a last resort, logoff, logon as Admin, do whatever needs to be done, logoff, logon as an ordinary User (a bind, I know). :w00t:

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As much as I hate to. I have to run administrative profile, I have a couple of programs that will not allow user only profiles.

1. Audio Cleaning Lab

2. Omni Page

3. HP Scan

Have tried some other software for the OCR apps but haven't found any quite as good as Omni Page and HP Scan.

jd

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User.

How can you be "careful"? Careful is when you are even using Firefox as a non-admin, get hit with an exploit and has no privileges to do anything. Or is careful installing at least 2 of each of the following:

- Antivirus

- Antispyware

- Anti-Trojan

- Miscellaneous block lists

- Miscellaneous process watchers

I use a limited account and AVG. I've had Windows installed for a year and 3 months, and never lived in fear.

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well, my father has had XP home installed on a toshiba laptop for over 3 years now and not once has he had a virus or any form of malware on his computer. he uses the admin account.

so it depends on what you do on the computer. if your going to all kinds of bad/untrusted sites/searching all over, your going to get nailed eventually.

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I work with computers since 1975, mainframes, and I never needed to use the "Administrator" account on this whole time. Of course, I'm talking about computer at home. When you install Windows you have administrator rights, you can do anything, but if you like to brush bits the best thing is: DOS 1.0 (beta) :)

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I use SYSTEM :D

For those that don't know, SYSTEM has even more power than Administrator.

You have to edit the SAM to make this work (found the instructions on some site I forgot...)

I know in the *nix world, they advise against using the 'root' account, but I don't really see it as a problem if the user is careful. Limited user accounts are for those who can't be careful.

SYSTEM is teh s**t.. Very useful when something wants to prohibit even Admin from doing something.. I dont use it all the time though, just when I need to by using a quick "at" command from the command prompt to get the Scheduler Service to run something for me..

Otherwise, I picked Admin.. If you want to play it safe and lower your permissions/rights for a program, use DropMyRights..

http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/securec...ure11152004.asp

Kind of the reverse of logging in as a normal User and using Run As to run something as an Admin.. This just takes away some rights from a program if you are already logged in as an Admin.

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Admin rights.I don't need protection from myself. :) And i don't like THIS :

I always logon with an ordinary User account. If I need to do "admin things", there's always Run As or as a last resort, logoff, logon as Admin, do whatever needs to be done, logoff, logon as an ordinary User (a bind, I know). :w00t:

If i need to do something i want to do it right now , without account changing & something like it :)

Edited by Red Knight
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I always logon with an ordinary User account. If I need to do "admin things", there's always Run As or as a last resort, logoff, logon as Admin, do whatever needs to be done, logoff, logon as an ordinary User (a bind, I know). :w00t:

Thats too much hassle. Why use a standard user account for anyway?

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Thats too much hassle. Why use a standard user account for anyway?
The reason I do is because it is obvious that malware gets no advantage. Signatures only go so far, so far that as I said earlier you need 2 of every type of "security app" running in the background to be safe. That is fine if all you do is word processing.

The only "security" app I have is AVG. I had SpywareBlaster, but I uninstalled it and even reversed any changes it made. I had Ad-Aware. I rarely used it, and when I did, I didn't need it only telling me that cookies and recently opened files were endangering my privacy. I don't have a slow system but I sure don't want tons of other crap running slowing it down.

I'll let other people be but, anyone not seeing the obvious advantage shouldn't complain that Windows has no security.

Edited by redxii
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I voted User, although I have full administrative rights on the PC, but I leave the Administrator account in it's default state totally untouched.

It's never personally happened to me, but that way if ever my profile gets ruined or somehow over-run with malware etc I can remove the account and the profile and start-a-fresh.

I set other family member's PC's with them as PU's and I use the Administrator account for looking after the background stuff.

I know having 2 Administrator's is supposedly not great for security purposes, but gives me the leverage to remove my profile in the event of something going tits up.

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