[W-Unit]

So back in the good ol' days of Vista, I had two accounts on my computer. One that I used all the time that was a standard user, and one that was an administrator. I think I only ever logged on to the administrator account twice, once being the first time after installing Windows, wherein the first thing I did was create the other account, and the other being when I had to update a bunch of drivers or something, I just logged on to Admin for convenience's sake.

I was able to do this because any time I needed to do something which required administrator privileges, Windows would either automatically ask me for the Admin password, or I'd just use the "Run as administrator" option, which would do the same thing.
I very much liked this configuration as I'm in college and frequently I'll have friends who want to play games on my computer. This setup allowed me to log in to my account and leave; letting them do whatever without having to worry about them seriously messing anything up (whether intentional or not), since they still couldn't do any serious harm without the administrator password.

I upgraded to Windows 7 (stupidly used the upgrade-in-place option, so all my files and settings and what-not are still the same, although I had to do a ton of tinkering to get everything to work after this), and now when I click "Run as administrator" it appears to do the same thing as running it normally. I'm never asked for a password if I want to do something which requires admin privileges, rather I'm just denied access.

I presume this change comes from the common complaint in Vista of "Vista's so annoying it's always popping up boxes asking you to give it permission to do everything wahhhhhh." That was actually a nice feature IMO - you SHOULD have to explicitly authorize certain actions on your computer each time - that's just logical. I don't understand how you can be legitimately bothered by having a greater deal of control over your computer.

Is there a way to go back to the Vista style, where I could theoretically still do everything from my Standard account, just typing in the admin pass as needed? Or is that "Run as administrator" option that's still on shortcuts just for decoration?

Thanks.

Edited by W-Unit, 06 February 2010 - 03:10 PM.