This question has appeared a little bit in this category and has never really been answered as a whole, just bits and peices of the answer have been said on these fourms, so I'll just run through what I've experienced:
1. I'm an admin, how come it says I don't have access to something, or a program says that you must be in an admin account when I try to run it? Answer, because just being marked admin doesn't mean that your programs run with that kindof access like in XP.
2. So what benefits are there to being an admin? Admins have the option of running programs and windows operations with full control (keep that in mind it is just an option), they still have to tell the computer when they want to exercise this ability of theirs. For safety reasons of course. For example: an admin right clicks on a program and clicks run as admininistrator, the computer will confirm that you want this to run as an admin (another security feature) and then it will run, but in a limited account the when you click run as..., it will popup a password prompt for one of the admins accounts, thats why being an admin is so special.
3. How do I know when a program is going to run as an admin? First of all, whenever Vista comes accross a program that has to run as an admin (or you marked to run that way) then a shield icon appears near the link to open the file, or if your viewing the program itself right embedded into the icon of the program. But this is not purely accurate in telling whether a progam is going to run as... Why? Because when a program owner creates their program they get to make their icon and can embedded this shield right into their icon. So the shield doesn't always mean that. So how can you tell? Another way to tell is when the program runs as an admin, the screen darkens (safety feature) and displays a message box that displays the program's name and credentials, you can then either click continue or close. Why is that in there? Again its a safety feature. If you can't run as an admin all the time, neither can viruses, that way when a virus trys to run as an admin the confirmation window appears and your like, "What? I didn't try running anything and cirtainly not as an admin," so you click close.
4. How do you mark a program as always run as admin? The following works on programs and shortcuts to programs: Right click on the file, click properties, click the tab called Compatibility, then select 'Run this program as an administrator'. If you want this to be applied to all users then click the button 'Show settings for all users' and select it there instead. That makes the program always run as an admin. (Note that setup programs automatically have this property even if the ckeckbox is not checked), after saving the setting and refreshing the window, you see that the program's icon is added with a shield. However in a limited account, if you click always run as admin, every time, at the startup or the program, the account asks for permisson from an admin.
Well thats all I can think of at the moment, if there is anymore related questions or if I got a little info wrong just post here.
(c)David Overton 2006-23