My colleague just told me that in Windows 7 I should install EVERYTHING by right clicking on the exe and going wiht "Install as admin" option, else lots of things would not be installed or written into registry.

Is there any truth to this? He said that run as admin is more than being logged in as local administrator account.

This is first time I heard about this, so I am fairly confused now.

My colleague just told me that in Windows 7 I should install EVERYTHING by right clicking on the exe and going wiht "Install as admin" option, else lots of things would not be installed or written into registry.

AFAIK having an administrator account you only need it when your administrator condition is not automatically recognized by the install program.

HTH

it is specially for stopping unnecessary registration of virus in windows registry . i hav switched off it .. if you are making some application that uses registry to read values it might be better if you switched it to .ini or .xml

The only local policy setting I have changed is to disable the Protected Desktop, which my video card doesn't seem to like. As an Administrator account, usually the only program that requires elevation are the ones that have the shield on them. But even then, if you just did a double-click, it would prompt for elevation. The problem is with poorly written programs OR programs that were made before UAC was being used. In those cases, you may be able to discern a different between normal and elevated function.

As a blanket rule that you should run EVERYTHING as Administrator is a bad idea. You should be familiar enough with your applications or installers to determine whether or not you need/want them to run elevated.

Well, he claims that for example Intel chipset drivers DON'T install fully/correctly under Windows7 UNLESS you run the setup.exe as admin. I find that a bit hard to believe, or rather think it's nonsense.

I always thought there was nothing above local administrator permissions.

setup.exe always generates the UAC elevation prompt, this is hardcoded. So it makes no difference

setup.exe always generates the UAC elevation prompt, this is hardcoded. So it makes no difference

Not when you have it switched off, like every normal person

in this case you have evrytime admin rights and the "Run as admin" is useless. And all normal people have it turned on to the highest level. read my UAC for Dummy Guide here in the Tweaks-forum

So with UAC off and logged on as local admin, "run as admin" makes NO difference in ANYTHING at all?

yes because you have the full admin token all the time. It makes no difference.