Re: Lost XP product key - before install.

In article news:<nMudnaYzh4Vf_JneRVnyvw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Alex Fraser wrote:
> IME most installers (that don't provide an option) install for the machine
> rather than the user - for instance, creating shortcuts under All Users.

That's true, but most is far from being all (and if you go back about a
gazillion postings you'll see that it was Tony Houghton's question about how
to have desktop icons on only some users' desktops that started this
discussion). I think we've agreed that what most installers do is not what
some users want!

> In that case the specific user doesn't matter, and temporarily adding a
> user to the Administrators group is redundant.

You mean, if the app is installed by an administrator it will automagically be
available to all users anyway ... and an ordinary user can start the installer
from a shell running as administrator to achieve that? Yes, that's the case
for those installers that install to the machine not to the user, but a
significant number of applications do install for the user *and* require
administrator permissions to install correctly. That's a bad thing, but a
reality.

... and, of course, one can't tell in advance *which* apps will require admin
permissions to install. Sometimes one doesn't find out until a few days of
frustration later when complaining that the application doesn't seem to work
properly, and a colleague helpfully says "you *did* install as administrator,
didn't you? It won't work properly otherwise".

Cheers,
Daniel.



.

Relevant Pages

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