Running Trainz as Administrator

[stouthm]

In an earlier thread Shane stated that if you are running Trainz in Vista or later we should be doing it as Administrator so that items will be saved properly. I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium/64 bit and have had no problems even though I'm not running as Administrator. Am I tempting fate and should I switch? If I should switch where would I make the change? I'm a believer of ' If it ain't broke leave it alone' but I will listen to other peoples suggestions. Thanks.

 

[mjolnir]

A lot is going to depend upon the details of how your hardware and software is configured. If you've not set up more than one account on the system, it is an already an adminstrator.

If you're not having problems, I wouldn't worry about it until you do.

ns

 

[rweber95]

What is M.U.T.O.T.T.?


Bob Weber

 

[mjolnir]

An acronym for something I was told by dispatchers with respect to certain trains operated by the Rock Island railroad. Some passenger trains, in the days when railroads before Government safety regulations were what they are today, and when the track was in considerably better shape than it was in later years, had appended to one of their train orders, the phrase "make up time on tangent track". Or, in my parlance, M.U.T.O.T.T.

I would say that my information on this was never more than hearsay, that I have never seen an order with the phrase in it, so cannot confirm the anecdote as accurate. I have no reason to doubt the truthfulness of the person who told it to me, though.

ns

 

[shaneturner12]

In an earlier thread Shane stated that if you are running Trainz in Vista or later we should be doing it as Administrator so that items will be saved properly. I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium/64 bit and have had no problems even though I'm not running as Administrator. Am I tempting fate and should I switch? If I should switch where would I make the change? I'm a believer of ' If it ain't broke leave it alone' but I will listen to other peoples suggestions. Thanks.

A bit of background for you:

In Windows Vista or later, Microsoft changed the permissions of administrator accounts (with the exception of the super-administrator account in Safe Mode) so that they could not write to protected locations like Program Files.

However, when a program does attempt to write to such a location, it appears to save, but what happens in the background is that Windows actually saves it in the VirtualStore folder. This means that when the program is next loaded, it looks for the file in it's folder, but does not find it as the file was actually stored in the Virtualstore folder which the program is not aware of.

In short, unless the folder has been configured to allow anyone to write to it (either doing it manually or using my Permission Generating Tool), or the program is run as administrator, this invisible redirection will virtually always take place.

More expensive versions of Windows Vista, 7, and 8 (Professional or higher) normally have higher permissions set for administrator accounts so do not normally have this issue.

Shane

 

[stouthm]

Shane, if I'm reading your explanation correctly then I should run Trainz as administrator. Since I only have one account I'm going to assume that mjolnir's statement in post#2 is correct and I'm already running as administrator. Thanks for all the replies.

 

[shaneturner12]

Indeed, as it's likely that not a lot of people here know about the reduced permissions on Administrator accounts in Windows Vista or later.

Shane

 

[JCitron]

Indeed, as it's likely that not a lot of people here know about the reduced permissions on Administrator accounts in Windows Vista or later.

Shane

A better explanation of this would be that the Safe-mode administrator is root admin in the Unix world where the account has access to everything including some destructive (OS) tools, where as the user-level administrator in Windows is the equivalent to super-user. A super-user has some rights to system tools but not access to those that can be detrimental to the OS. A super-user can elevate his rights (the pronoun being generic here and not biased), to other levels but in Windows this cannot be done because of the way the OS is structured. From a system administration standpoint and security standpoint, this is a good thing, but from a high-level user standpoint, it's a pain.

John

 

[shaneturner12]

I completely agree with you there, although that may be a bit difficult to explain to any users who are not familiar with the concept...

Shane