J. Patrick Fenton, CIS Dept., West Valley College
E-mail to:Administrative Rights - what's this??
Windows allows for the creation of various classes of users and to assign differing levels of "Rights" to those users. Rights are "permission slips," to use a pretty understandable analogy, that allow a user to do certain things, but not to perform other actions. These rights are assigned when the user account is created, and may be modified by the user being assigned to one or more user "Groups." Groups uniformly apply rights to all users within a particular group. A typical example would be that members of a group may be able to read a file, but not modify or erase that file on a shared system or network. Or, somewhat pertaining to installing the software, a user may be able to modify certain settings on their computer, but other settings in the Control Panel may not be available - you may, for example, be able to change a password, but not the printer settings.
Administrator rights also allow you to install software on a computer. With ever-increasing security, operating systems now routinely require authorization for software installation, modifying system settings, applying updates, and so on. You may have noticed this when an update has appeared, you've clicked the button only to get a dialog box asking for a user name and password.
Are you the only user on your computer? In other words, did you buy a system for your own use and you are the only user for this machine? Then your user account is most likely an administrator account. When you start the machine, do you have to enter a user name and password? Is there another user account shown, perhaps with the name Administrator or Admin? Then you may or may not have an administrator account.
If you are on a lab computer or a computer at your place of business or institution, it is unlikely that you have full administrator rights, and you will not be able to install this software. If you are unsure of your status and continue the installation process, you will not harm your computer in any way; but the installation will not be successfully completed.
On Windows Vista systems, begin by closing out of any open applications (including Internet Explorer). Click on the Start button and navigate over to the Internet Explorer icon. The icon may be on your desktop, directly pinned to the Start menu, or in another location depending on your level of customization. Right-click on the icon and select 'Run as administrator.' You are ready to proceed with the software installation. If you do not see that option when you right click on the Internet Explorer icon, you do not have Administrator rights.
On Windows 2000 and XP systems, you can check if you have Administrator Rights by right-clicking on the Start button. If you see the text "Explore All Users," you have Administrator rights. If you do not see this text, you do not have Administrator rights.