News from PANUG/BizNix - October 8, 2002
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org

WINDOWS UPDATE REQUIRES ADMIN RIGHTS
by Alan Spaeth

The September 25 broadcast included an article about
Windows Update not working unless you're logged in
as an Administrator. The article seemed to imply that
this was a recent change - that admin rights were not
always needed. Windows Update has always worked this
way. 

Windows Update is not the only update service that
requires admin priviledges. Ximian's Red Carpet Linux
update service requires root privileges.
[Red Hat's update service may also work this way.]

This long-standing issue doesn't have anything to do
with Microsoft's recent supplemental EULAs that
grant themselves increased rights to your PC. 


[This is text that I cut:]

(Of course, this means that PC's local Admin rights. 
Windows Update doesn't require you to be logged on as
a Domain or Active Directory Administrator.  I
certainly hope nobody spends time doing things like
surfing the web or reading email as a Domian Admin!)

In Win9x, every user is effectively an Administrator
since there's no security. In Windows NT and its
successors, any process updating OS components needs
to be running in a security context with Admin rights.

That's not to say that Microsoft isn't up to something
with the new EULAs, but Windows Update requiring Admin
rights isn't new or surprising to me.