>>1.) Possibly. I never used XP 64-bit; I did have Vista 64-bit, but found UAC so crippling that I turned it off. In general I think that UAC, and the principle of least-privilege, is a very Good Thing; it's just that in Vista it sucked very badly. It's much more granular, and generally better thought-out, under 7; still, though, there are situations like this, where you need to run a Control Panel item as administrator but there's no way to right-click anything and select "Run as administrator"; hence the workaround I posted.
The path "C:\\Program Files (x86)" also existed in Win XP-64.
I also turned off UAC in Vista. I tried it, but it didnt work. Now on Windows 7 I have turned it on and there are nearly no problem.
Every setting from Microsoft should not need a UAC prompt in Windows 7 with default setting. This was an optimization because otherwise it would be too annoying for most users. Every code that is not generated my Microsoft should throw an UAC prompt if it needs Administrator rights. At least this is the official solution of Microsoft. The "run as administrator" is only for some actions where you need Administrator rights without an Installer like some actions on the command line.
>>1 1/2) The problem is that "C:\\PROGRA~1\\" is ambiguous: it could mean "C:\\Program Files\\" or it could mean "C:\\Program Files (x64)\\", and apparently it reverted to pointing to the shorter option.
C:\\Progra~1 points to only one direction. In my case it is C:\\Program Files (and I bet for everybody else too), but DOS names should never be generated by simple shortening the long name auf the directory because it depends on the order in which the directories are created which comes first. In many cases there are more than one "C:\\Progra~" dir. In XP I had one "C:\\Programme" which is the official dir, then there was a "C:\\Program Files" for installers that ignored the fact, that I have a German system. Then there was a dir "C:\\Program Data", there was a dir "C:\\prog" for my own programs. There was also a dir with the name "C:\\Progra~1", so if there is a problem with the abbriviation we would see it more often.
Also I think there is no need to install PDFCreator in "C:\\Program Files". I think you can put it elsewhere.
>>2.) If you meant temporarily deactivating UAC... that requires two reboots (disable UAC, reboot; do your thing; re-enable UAC, reboot; go back to work); this method requires none - you don't even have to log out your session.
I do not like the user switching on desktop machines. This causes more troubles than you save time, if some settings are changed while a program is running on the other user.
Rebooting should be not such a great problem. You only need one reboot now. The second reboot can be next evening if you go home.
>>3.) If you meant "why not disable UAC permanently"... well, yes you can do that, but it's not a great idea, security-wise. The point of UAC is to limit the amount of damage that malware (or dumb users) can do; running as an administrator all the time is like taking the blade guard off your tablesaw - convenient, but not recommended. It's just that Microsoft is a few decades late in embracing this philosophy, and we've all developed the habit of running as administrator all the time (and writing software that won't run any other way.) Microsoft's first stab at doing things the right way - Vista - was a horrifying mess, and 7 is not perfect; still, the sooner we all get into good habits the safer we'll be in general.
I dont meant permanently. UAC is annoying, but it is very useful. The system also stays cleaner and faster if not every stupid application fills the registry with garbage.
>>4.) We're not creating a new user. "Administrator" and "Guest" are created when Windows is installed; they're just disabled by default. You could also do this by creating a new administrative user, but this way is faster, easier, and (I think) cleaner. Still a hack, but not such a nasty hack.
They are there, but the profile does not exist. If you have modified the default user on your machine with some settings and bigger amounts of data, a new profile is created. This data needs storage and has to be copied by the backup script every time. Also initializing the new profile takes as long a the one restart needed and if you forget to turn it off again you have the security hole number one: An Administator user without password with the default name.
Your procedure will not work with a new Administrator user, because they will also be UAC protected. What would be the difference between the new Administrator user and my Administrator user that I am using now. If you ask me it is a bug that the official "Administrator" is not protected by the UAC.
>>5.) Not true. You can modify the properties of the PDFCreator printer as well (go ahead, try it!) - just not the properties of the "PDFCreator:" port monitor. As far as I can tell, that's because the installer that created it was running as an administrator; whatever is created by an administrator can only be modified by an administrator.
It does not matter who created the settings, but it does matter where they are created. If the settings are in the user profile, of the registry in HKCU, then also a Standard user has full access. You can even install software, as long as you stay in your user profile. Google Chrome is a case of a per user installation.
If the settings are in the All Users directory, "C:\\Program Files", "C:\\Windows" or the registry in HKLM then you only have read access as standard user. Access to the file system will fail with a security exception, but accessing the registry will not. With UAC control the system fakes the access and does not throw an exception. If you want to change something in Vista/7, click save and if you open it again it is not there any more, than this could be a reason.
Even if it would be important who created the setting there would be no way to tell if you created the files as Administrator or Standard user. If you click on "Start as Administrator" your User is still your user. It only has administrator priviledges. Your username, all environment variables etc. stay the same. In NTFS the creator of a file is only identified by his user ID and this user ID will be the same for you and you elevated as administrator. You can also not set 2 access rights for you at the same time.