Do you work on your computer as a local administrator?  If you are running Windows, most likely you are.  Certain other operating systems also place you in a local administrator account by default, but many alternatives to Windows are smart enough to create a regular user account for you to use by default.  Note for Windows Vista, this is slightly different.  However, since the majority of users haven’t upgraded yet, I will hold off on the Vista details until a future article, so we don’t confuse things too much.

What is a local administrator?  This is the account on your computer that has absolute power over Windows.  Anything you want to do - such as install drivers, update the system, install new programs, or manage user accounts – can be done from the local administrator account.  This account is appropriately named “Administrator” by default.

Why is this bad?  After all, it’s your computer, don’t you want to have full control over everything?  While you certainly need the local administrator account to properly manage your computer, you shouldn’t be using it for your day-to-day tasks.  Web surfing should never be done from a local administrator account.  Why?  Because any program you run as an administrator has the same level of access that you do.  So if you go to a website that has malicious code on it, that code could direct your computer to install programs, delete files, or many other equally dangerous tasks.

Convinced, but not sure if you are using a local administrator account?  There’s a number of ways to find out.  Go to the Start Menu, and click on Run.  In the window that comes up, type “cmd” (without the quotes).  In the Command Prompt window, type “net localgroup administrators” (again, without the quotes).  A list of users who are local administrators will come up, so check to see if you’re in there.  Another way to check would be to go to Control Panel, and click on User Accounts.  You should see your account there, with a word such as Administrator, Power User, or Limited User with it.

In the next part, I’ll show you how to turn your account into a regular user account, without losing all your carefully customized settings and files.