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Thread: Windows 7 Clone Profiles

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    Windows 7 Clone Profiles

    Hi all,

    At work so scant on details as this is my home rig.

    I'm currently running as an admin on my windows 7 rig (Don't need a lecture on the bad habit thanks ) and I'm looking at changing that over to a user since I understand win 7 users are less crippled that previous incarnations.

    My questions are thus:

    Is that true? Can a "user" in win7 actually do anything day-to-day or will I be stuck putting an admin code in anytime I want to launch a game or anything?

    Is it possible to clone the entire admin profile, then switch it to a normal user? I've got a load of stuff installed under the admin account, I really dont want the hassle of reinstalling everything, manually moving game saves etc. Would this break things reliant on admin privs?

    Thanks

    If this is unclear let me know and I'll try to make myself clearer.

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    Re: Windows 7 Clone Profiles

    I use the standard user account (has administrator privileges, but not all) every day on my home computer. I can launch and install applications. You should be able to run all the programmes installed onto the admin account, just create shortcuts to them.

    With UAC turned to the maximum, the prompts you will get are 'are you sure you want to do this' type of thing.

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    roachcoach (21-02-2011)

  4. #3
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    Re: Windows 7 Clone Profiles

    As long as you've got User Account Control enabled there's no problem running Windows 7 as an account with Administrator priveleges: you automatically run in a lowered permission state then, when a process needs to ask for admin permissions, you just have to click OK in a dialog box. Windows 7 also has levels of UAC (rather than Vista's on or off) so you can control how often you get asked to elevate permissions. I use UAC on all my Windows boxes and only ever get asked for permission to continue when I'm installing new software, which makes sense.

    The only thing to be aware of is that a lot of old programs that don't understand UAC will behave differently depending on whether you launch them as Admin or as user, which can mean things like losing all progress in saved games.

    Big Fish Games is / are particularly bad for this: the number of times my kids have played a game for a couple of hours, shut down, and next time they've come back to the computer their progress has been squirrelled away somewhere obscure and they've had to start again is just ridiculous...

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    roachcoach (21-02-2011)

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    Re: Windows 7 Clone Profiles

    Ah, I use that one anyways.

    Might leave it alone and just set up a guest account for "guests". aka housesitters

    thanks folks

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    Re: Windows 7 Clone Profiles

    Quote Originally Posted by scaryjim View Post
    As long as you've got User Account Control enabled there's no problem running Windows 7 as an account with Administrator priveleges: you automatically run in a lowered permission state then, when a process needs to ask for admin permissions, you just have to click OK in a dialog box. Windows 7 also has levels of UAC (rather than Vista's on or off) so you can control how often you get asked to elevate permissions. I use UAC on all my Windows boxes and only ever get asked for permission to continue when I'm installing new software, which makes sense.

    The only thing to be aware of is that a lot of old programs that don't understand UAC will behave differently depending on whether you launch them as Admin or as user, which can mean things like losing all progress in saved games.

    Big Fish Games is / are particularly bad for this: the number of times my kids have played a game for a couple of hours, shut down, and next time they've come back to the computer their progress has been squirrelled away somewhere obscure and they've had to start again is just ridiculous...
    That'll be the filesystem virtualisation by the sounds of it - take a look at http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelaz...alization.aspx for a pretty decent basic grounding.

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    roachcoach (22-02-2011)

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