Both to un-administrator myself?

I personally run as a XP Administrator on this laptop at all times, never have created a limited account on it. I've run as an administrator on every network and every computer I've owned, except for nix ones, and have never been compromised.

Now, what you've got to ask yourself is if you feel that you and your wife know enough, have enough protection in place, and understand enough to keep from being compromised.

My mother in law doesn't and since kids user her computer, she and the kids have separate windows limited user accounts, in addition to their safety measures. When she wants to install something she logs in as an Administrator level account, then calls me if it won't run as her normal limited account.

You may find arguments pro and con and referrences to 'safe hex' or caution in your internet use but I always run as Limited unless required to run as Admin. for downloads, etc. With the rare possibility of having my 'anti-'s compromised then the 'attacker' will have less chance of wreaking more widespread damage to the PC.

Is this as simple as

Yes, or create new Limited accounts for yourself and wife although the first option would allow less need of transfer of data, pictures, favorites etc. from your old accounts to the new ones.

Ok, so I created a new admin account on my XP home system, changed my wife's and my own accounts to "limited", and now I'm logged in as this limited account. But you know what's REALLY WEIRD?? I was able to install a program I found on the internet called TrojanSimulator, which starts a process in memory called TSServ.exe and even adds a registry entry to make it start itself up automatically on your next reboot.

WHY OH WHY was this able to happen? I swear to god I'm logged in as a

*limited* account. I know this because my antivirus (NAV2006) no longer allows me to change settings and I cannot create files on c:\\ . Yet I was able to download this trojan to my desktop and install it.

Not only did my antivirus not detect this, but Windows allowed it. Granted, it did ask me if I was SURE I wanted to run the install, but nowhere did I have to "run as" or log in as my admin account.

Help!

I also have tried using limited accounts, but have given up becuase some of my pre xp programs do not run without admin privileges. When I was using limited accounts, I found that if I signed in as a limited account, xp would apparently install programs, and give no error messages, but I would find out later that the programs were either not installed at all or were only partially installed. Seems to me that the admin/user stuff is mostly bs, and is another example of the folly of adding security on after instead of building it in from the start.

Stuart

Because you are not running a firewall program? Because it is known and labeled as ok to/by NAV, even tho the behavior you describe is normally 'bad'? Because you are not running anti-spyware software? There could be other reasons 'I know not of'. Because it is in a 'user' account, it is 'sandboxed' there and not on the rest of the accounts (including admin/main/root)? You may not be in as much 'danger' as you fear. Or you may be. Have you googled that trojan program to see what you could find?

It's a trojan tester (not a real trojan) but this isn't the point. What I'm really asking is WHY was I able to install *anything* at all, considering I am logged in now for all my websurfing purposes on an XP

*limited* user account, not one with admin privs. This trojan tester I installed even made registry additions. And I also was able to install Google Earth, which is legit but I shouldn't have been able to install it either, should I?

Am I missing something obvious? I've read everywhere that you should run as a limited user. And if you wanna install stuff you switch users (temporarily) over to your admin account. Yet this is seeming unnecessary.

Yes. You are in what is sometimes called your 'own sandbox' as a user, what you install there does not (or should not) affect other users or the admin account.

Only necessary if you want _all_ users on that comp to be able to access / use that program, which is 'usually', but as you have just demonstrated, not always, such as if you want to 'test' something. If necessary for your piece of mind, you could now copy / transfer any other files you need / want from that account onto some removeable media, start a new account and put it all there, and then never use that 'bad' account again. Hopefully, scanning any such files six ways from sunday as they say before restoring them to the new account. AdAware. Spybot S&D. Even Windows Defender. All three are free.

Actually most so-called security software adds attack vectors for privilege escalation.

The latter is still recommended. An admin account reverted to a normal user account will typically remain having access to already created objects in locations where a normal user shouldn't have any access at all. Anyway, a careful analysis and adjustment of existing access privileges (f.e. with Sysinternals' AccessEnum) is always recommended.

Only you can make that decision. Doing your daily computing on a non-administrator login will lead to less malware and generally make things more secure. The trade off is that you will be spending some time administrating your computer. You're going to need to learn how to change security permissions on the filesystem, and it might not be a bad idea to learn runas.exe now as you will find some programs only work if installed in the user's own environment.

I can tell you that I used to reload my home PC every 4-6 months because of spyware. I have since switched myself and my wife to using non-administrator accounts and have not had to reload it since. However, I have had headaches with certain games that will only play online when they're running with administrative priviledges. This is most likely due to the complex anti-cheat systems built into them that require priviledges to check your system for cheats.

And you should learn how to script administrative tasks.

Installing a non-administrative program isn't an administrative task and shouldn't be granted any admin privileges. Either dump it for a working program, or learn how to get rid of installers.

I've been running a Win2K box since about mid '00, when SP2 was around (good advice: wait until a system has become quite stable). It's still running.

And create known privilege escalation attack vectors. No, thanks. If you really want to play games, get a dedicated box for it. Or a hot-swappable hard disk.

Was that an early release of service pack 2, or were you thinking of SP1? ;-)