Windows 10 Administrator Account? Do you Daz there?
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Posts: 86
Q: Do you run Daz Studio in Microsoft Windows OS within the default account, the Administrator account or not and why?
You don't have to read this part -- So I've got my shiny new PCIE 4.0 build mostly completed (it never really ends does it but now I can hang out with the cool nvme m.2 4.0 kids) and I had some issues with the newest Win10 forcing online account creation, pin, and phone number. Perhaps they should slow down a bit and sober up over there because,
um,
no. Riding a high on that new contract 
Once I fixed that I'm staring at an unpatched OS on metal as superuser that is very much hardwired to an overpriced toy consumer wireless router & I start to get that anxiety I never would have gotten had I never installed a Linux distro when I was young, smart, handsome, witty, and charming - back when Ma would keep turning the crank so Pa could boot to a command line. Expeditiously I go to work attempting to make an effort at locking down & removing what I can. An exercise in futility I know but defense is a habit. I know the Epic game launcher is going to want elevated privilages so that's going on the Admin account sadly. After I spent all that money on ga... um oops, nevermind. I just purchased a few things including Manfriday's Render Queue and I'm logged into a 'guest' account staring at DAZ3DIM_1.2.0.52_Win64.exe (SHA-256 1b7ba94d130cc7ec4a3ad902aab216def6d2b0df41c2181c8127cb7ff564445c) wondering if I should install here or make life easier but my non-financial, non-medical data on this PC a little less secure and install on the Administrator account seeing as how I'm going to have to connect that account to the WAN for Epic anyways. So I thought I'd ask how many Windows users here run Daz Studio in Windows from the 'Administrator' account. I know Daz Studio works fine from an account without elevated privilages (Guest account) I just don't know if any 3rd party apps are going to give me any grief. If you've read this far I'd also like to hear if you'd like to see the 'Administrator' account go away in Microsoft Windows as it has on so many other operating systems. If that default account vanishes so does this delema.
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Comments
You can give any account admin privileges. Windows isn't Unix. People routinely run single user computers on an admin account.
I was curious if I was forced into creating an online account during the first install because I didn't have my Windows 10 key available at the time. I've always activated after install in the past. I just downloaded an .iso from Windows Media Creation Tool, transfered it to another computer and was able to install using my key and a local account not connected to the internet within a virtual machine. Once it recognized my key and I clicked Next gave me an option to select "I don't have internet" or something like that.
In the future I'll have my key ready at install.
If you install an old Win10 build then an old nvidia driver before updating you won't be forced to install the nvidia control panel via the Microsoft Store even after updating to most recent build at the time of this writing. After updating it auto-installed the control panel for me.
I'm not going to tell you to avoid running software from an admin account in a non-offense situation. Basic security steps like that are a slippery slope. Next thing you know you're wearing a seatbelt and not having whiskey for breakfast. That's no kind of life. Okay love you go forth and create!
Daz3D actually won't let you run it as an "admin", so being run with or without "admin" accounts is literally irrelevant. I think they did this, due to many people suggesting that "run it as admin" as a solution to things which were completely unrelated to "admin rights". Also, I think that possibly running it as an "admin", would make it generate files that other plugins or external programs would need to access, but they couldn't, if they were not ALSO running "as admin". (The database component? The installer? The rendering engines using the compiled shaders? Saved files?)
So... since the program can't be run as an admin, its effective access is just "all user-levels", and extended to "guest", by default. Though I am sure you could lock it from guest access, without much effort, or issue.
Running a program on an admin account does not make the programs run "as admin"... It just makes the possibility there, if it exists. (Which it doesn't, for Daz3D.)
I read this right before I was going to go to bed (exhausted). I have zero experience with Microsoft's Hyper-V so I figured I'd just learn it real quick (exhausted). Can't say I'm a fan... perhaps it will grow on me. I basically turned the default Windows 10 Admin account into Root making everything run elevated even if I just double click a link to an executable. I kept everything within the Microsoft ecosystem, used no 3rd party software except for post analysis and if I broke anything inside the hypervisor no big deal. You are correct in that if you right-click on Daz's executable and try to run it as administrator from the admin account to wich it installs you'll be greated with "Daz Studio cannot be run with elevated permissions." Once I began to adjust to Hyper-V it took less than 2 minutes to get around the restriction & I'm a sleep deprived old man with no computer science training who uses Windows as an expensive Xbox and not much more. I did not modify Daz Studio. Because I was working fast within a local virtual environment I was only interested in bypassing the restriction. The OpenGL error was expected within the hypervisor but I took screenshots of Daz running elevated. Video would have been better proof. You don't have to believe me. The way I did it is very easy if you'd like verify. It's not an exploit because you have the Administrator password hence you have free reign. That is where the desire for layered security comes from. When you run Daz Studio from a guest account you're basically running sudo on that one app but the heart of the OS is theoretically protected behind a seperate Administrator password. The idea being that any fundamental changes to the OS will requre that Administrator password.
It would be nice if when installing Daz Studio from a Guest account it also created links in the start menu on that account. At the time of this writing on my system it only creates start menu links in the Administrator account.