A probably stupid question about XP

[Juud]

Our family desk-top PC runs XP. Having read on this forum that it's smart not to give complete access to all users, it is set up with a limited-access account for each family memeber, plus an Admin one.
To keep Windowz Diseases at bay, I run Norton.
Again on info from this forum, I also run CCleaner and AdAware, and do regular defragging.
Not that I know if defragging is good for anything at all, but because it satifies my housewifely urges to see a chaos of red blue and green lines reduced to nice tidy blocks. ;)

Stupid Question: Is it enough to simply run Norton, AdAware and CCleaner when logged onto the Admin account? In other words, will that 'do' the whole computer or do I need to run them individually for each account?

Any answers gratefully recieved.

[Binoculars]

Bloody good question that. I look forward to the answer.

[frostbite]

Should cover the lot.

Interesting question though.

[BOAC]

I believe a 'full system scan' does the lot.

[hellsbrink]

If I remembers right, when you install Norton there is an option that says something like "use this with only you or all users of this computer."

In other words, if you said "only me", I don't think it will protect the other profiles when they are in use (you find out later when you scan from your profile, autoprotect won't). Have no idea if you can change that or not, may require a reinstall of Norton (cue hair pulling).

You can always shove AVG/Zone Alarm on their profiles for the hell of it, at least you'll know you're covered.....

[Muffin Themule]

I have never used Norton, but other similar products do scan everything when run from an Admin account.

Last time I used CCleaner it had to be invoked from each user account. The same probably applies to Adaware. Why not test my hypothesis and educate us? :confused:

[Saab Dastard]

An application runs with the credentials of the current user, unless elevated by "run as" or association with a system account. This latter is more usually found with services - many AV programs will run as a service, which means that they are independent of the user logged in, and indeed can run when no-one is logged in.

Basically, an administrator-level account (user or system) can have full access to all files and folders on the system (there are some exceptions, to do with personal files), and should be able to scan all areas of the registry and all files.

All the anti-spyware programs (ADaware, spybot and ewido) that I run as admin pick up stuff from all user accounts (registry and files), and the AV program (sophos) runs as a service, and scans all files on all disks as a daily job, with on-demand scanning active for any logged-in user.

But that is not to say that all programs function in the same way, however!

SD

[cdtaylor_nats]

If each user has their own e-mail then Norton should be set up for all users so it can scan everybodys incoming mail.