This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Peter G Provost. Original Post: More Great Non-Admin Resources Feed Title: Peter Provost's Geek Noise Feed URL: /error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Technology news, development articles, Microsoft .NET, and other stuff... Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Peter G Provost Latest Posts From Peter Provost's Geek Noise

I started adding these to the last Geek Notes and realized that they deserve a post all their own.

You should already know who Aaron Margosis is. If you don’t, go read his blog. Read all of it.

Aaron is the guy who brought us MakeMeAdmin and PrivBar, two tools I can’t recommend highly enough for developers running non-admin (like we all should). He is a frequent contributor to the internal LUA mailing list and recently posted four great pieces to his blog.

• Remembering Calculator and Character Map Settings – The details of getting this done right. Three registry keys and a reboot. This hack is very cool because it takes advantage of Windows ability to do INI file redirection.
• Managing Power Options as a non-administrator – If you run LUA on a laptop, you’re familiar with this one. Until I learned this trick, I had to launch the power applet from an admin console window. But no longer.
• Ctrl-C doesn't work in RUNAS or MakeMeAdmin command shells – Yep. It’s annoying as hell, but it doesn’t work. As Aaron says, “Use Ctrl-Break instead.”
• Changing the system date, time and/or time zone – Only Admins and Power Users can change the system time. Again, laptop LUA users are familiar with this one. You travel to a new city and can’t change the time! Or, even more common, is people who double click on the time in the taskbar in order to get the “Windows Calendar Tool”.  Aaron shows you how to set  up your system to allow this.

One more thing… I’m working on an article about a new tool I’m releasing that is basically Aaron’s MakeMeAdmin on steroids. Written in C#, it lets you create shortcuts and launch commands in addition to creating an admin console window.