Studio XPS 16 / Windows 7 users

Personally I try to run out of a standard user account (instead of an administrator account). It’s the most secure way to go and just plain good form IMO. But I realize that most people do not because windows defaults you into the administrator account. Well I just noticed that the ACEeventLog (an event log created by the Catalyst Control Center that you can find in the Event Viewer) spews out a stream of events/errors when I run out of a standard user acccount. These events/errors stop as soon as I go into my administrator account.

I have a feeling that these events have been causing instability in my system when in the standard user account. If its true that its Dell’s video driver that’s doing this it would be crazy. Dell is an IT company and should know that LOTS of their users will be in standard user accounts (any good admin will do this). Well to make a long story short, I’d like to pose a question: How many of you run out of a standard user account? If I'm in the minority then it might explain the instability issues I’ve been having that few others are not. Thanks!

 

+1 for using standard account.

I do this and do not have any event log issues using latest dell drivers.

 

I've always run stuff out of an admin account since my 1st own computer in 2006. I'm more aware of what goes on in my computer.

 

Are you using a clean install of win7 or the image that Dell shipped your system with?

 

Running something like a web browser as an administrator is pretty dumb. Luckily since Vista there is UAC that allows processes to be ran with limited permissions regardless of if you're admin or not. In fact they can even be ran with less-than-user permissions such as IE's protected mode.

So I can login as admin and have the convenience of installing software and easily changing settings without entering a password, and still run processes with limited permissions as a defense against exploits, especially web browsers.

 

I just run off my admin account all the time, dont really care about security issues. Thats why i love when i disable the windows security center, its just so nag free

Dont see a point on creating another account for normal use...

 

I realize I could just run as admin with UAC set to “always notify” (Vista mode), but apparently the privilege structure is still different in standard user accounts. I know this because the event/error stream stops even in my “always notify” administrator account. And this is just the problem. When MS defaults people to admin accounts, developers write code for people in admin accounts. But then REAL administrators deploy a bunch of workstations with limited privilege accounts and they’re plagued by incompatibility and stability issues because of poorly engineered software that only works well with root level access. And home users are plagued by malware that installs behind their back because they’re always running with root level access.

/*RANT
I can’t believe that Microsoft caved with UAC in win7. In my opinion they didn’t go far enough in vista. Windows should default a new install into a standard user account and make it HARD to get to the root level access account. I know it’s a unix mindset, but that’s how you get a stable and secure OS ecosystem (eg OSX and linux). Sure, joe average would whine and moan for a while (wot!?!? i need credentials!!!) and a lot of developers need to fixed their software, but really, MS would gain a lot of credibility and stop driving good software engineers and power users away from windows. NT is a pretty solid kernel so the fix is purely procedural. Microsoft would be all the better in the end for doing it.
endRANT*/

I realize some of you aren't having a problem in standard accounts, which makes this all the more baffling, but that doesn't affect my overall premise.

 

Yeah but UAC was never a security boundary, it's this high-level feature thats mainly to make it more convenient to run as limited user and for encouraging software developers to make their stuff work correctly in limited-user mode. Maybe now that all that is getting fixed it'll start defaulting to standard user accounts.

 

Are you using dell's win7 install image or a clean install?

 

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