very basic questions concerning user control

i read in another thread in this forum that it's advicable to use windows, not logged in as the administrator, because it's safer from online threats
is this case with vista also? because vista has user account control for the administrator as well, so if i enable user-account-control, it would be equivalent to using the computer as a user with no administrator rights?

supposing i want to install a program,is it necessary that i am logged in as the administrator?
after installing the program, do i have to enter the serial number as the adminstaror,or only the user or both? because for some programs, apart from entering the serial number as the administrator,I've had to enter it as the user also, in order to register it for the user account, am i doing something wrong or is it necessary to enter the serial number more than once?

thank you.

 

The basic premise is that you run normally as a Basic User aka Limited User Account. This type of account has read and execute priveleges to most directories, but not write. Writing is allowed by default to your profile directories, and then not all of them. Running regedit as a basic user will also have many portions locked. Changing network settings is locked. So this account is good because it is not able to do many things to harm the system.

No matter what OS, when you run as a Basic User, you will need to be an administrator to change things sometimes. Change network setting, install driver, install application, whatever. The easiest way to start a process as an administrator. Using 'alternate credentials'. This way you don't log off, you just start things AS someone else. There are many ways of doing this, depending on the OS.

So you don't really want to log off from User and log in as Admin. Unless you have a lot of stuff to do.

Sul.

 

Please see this thread.