Windows NT security "work arounds".

[turf]

I have a question. Our company is progressively switching from using Windows 95 to NT as we are finally getting more powerful machines. I'm an end user on our network, and I really hate all of this Network Administrator "I AM GOD" crap. Are there any security "work arounds" I can use to install programs onto my workstation without being admin. I do understand that those privileges are in place for the integrety of the entire network, but I don't consider myself one of those dummies who would screw up everything. However, I unfortunately don't have access to the domain server to grant myself privileges, and our admin folks suck about just "getting around to it" when anyone needs anything done.
Please share any information you may know that could help.

Thank You!!!!
turf..

 

[office boy]

<<but I don't consider myself one of those dummies who would screw up everything. >>
Then you are the most dangerous kind of user. You would never get past straight user on my network, after you spent some time as guest.


Oh yeah, no work arounds.

 

[turf]

Only thing I meant by that was I wouldn't be trying to f*ck around with the network, or the servers. I'd be too afraid I would take down the whole damn thing. All I'm interested in is installing things like winamp winzip, netscape for webpage editing, etc. on my own machine, you know, those nice little utilities that make life good..

 

[BoberFett]

LMAO @ office boy! How right you are.

 

[ArkAoss]

hmm office boy, i have a story about some one like turf, they moved this guys office to another one next to it (actually it was a small room with cubicles, they moved his set of cubicles from one room to another.)
That new room only had one network drop, with new people in their it needed more so he took and put a hub in the cieling, on the other side of small room b, ran power for it from the power near the hub that was in room a, ran it over the piping and stuff so it would sag in the middle and pull out the power adaptor, and then ran a network line back accross room b to the network drop in the middle wall. then he ran network drops from the hub (which he left on top of a flourescent lighting fixture) to the other pc's in his small room. I had to move the hub and the power run, then i had to rig the power cord to keep it from un pluging itself, then i did the drop i had originally been assigned to do. then the little prick had the nerve to tell me he didnt know where the network cable ran, and which of the lines he had where in the hub. and dont ask why it's set up like that with hubs in the cieling, i'm not a full time it admin their, they are running very shodily, and will soon probly have to re wire the whole building.

 

[turf]

BTW. I'm NOT dangerous...
I'm not one of the curious types that would get into the system and just start messing with stuff without knowing exactly what I was doing. I just want to be able to enjoy the same network privileges I have enjoyed with my 95 machine. If I need to share a file or a drive itha another workstation, I want to be able to set that up. If there is a program on our network public drive(s) that I need to do my job I want to be able to install that without having to wait two weeks on someone to &quot;get around to it&quot;. Know what I mean Vern.

 

[Mutilator]

Ask one of your admins to make you a local administrator to your PC... that would allow you to install your software like winzip without putting the entire network at risk.

 

[turf]

Mutilator, thanks, that's the kind of response I was looking for. And that's all the admin priv's I even care about having.

 

[office boy]

WinZip and winamp both install just fine with only &quot;user&quot; privileges.

As to this.
I just want to be able to enjoy the same network privileges I have enjoyed with my 95 machine. Won't, can't, and wouldn?t happen. There is a reason your comp switch to NT (probably then same reason I switched the one I work for.
If I need to share a file or a drive itha another workstation, I want to be able to set that up. This is a matter at then discretion of the Admin, if it's important then he will allow this to happen
If there is a program on our network public drive(s) that I need to do my job I want to be able to install that without having to wait two weeks on someone to &quot;get around to it&quot;. I doubt it's two weeks (although I have no idea) and like I said, most programs will install ok.

 

[miken]

You are dangerous if you install Winamp.

You are dangerous if you install Netscape.

You think you know what you're doing, and that makes you even more dangerous. Do you know how much WinAmp slows your machine down? This isn't your home machine! You don't own this machine! Do your D@MN job and you won't need all this bloatware. I am so sick of people who have to much confidence in themselves, and think they can run a network, or outsmart the people that do. How dare you even say that when the MIS guys have worked their @sses off getting degrees/certs in their field, just to have people like you make them work harder, not to mention sapping the confidence they have in doing a good job. What, you can't wait a bit for your software? Is your project sooo important that you need that crap right now? Well, I have news for you, if you get fired that company will still be there, so don't be such a fool.

 

[ArkAoss]

YEAH GO OFFICE BOY i hate it when the peons try to take control of their lives, like when thay all killed rc5 i had on the athlon 700's

 

[Vegito]

BTW, even if you install those software, if you by accident installed a &quot;pirate&quot; version, your company may be held liable for your actions in certain states..

 

[Aboroth]

I'm just trying to get around the idea of using NT for a network. Ewww... *shudder*.

 

[BaDaBooM]

Though Miken was a little harsh, did you really not expect that kind of response from a forum like this? (a lot of admins here)

 

[Yoshi]

Man just use your work PC to do work. You don't need Winamp, you don't pay for the drive space so you should not care about WinZip (although if your company is smart they provide software for compression), and you may or may not need access to the internet.

Letting employees install software on their office PC's just results in machines that are screwed up. You may very well know what you are doing but the guy at the desk next to you may not but might screw around anyway. This just costs the company money as IT people go around fixing things. It also allows pirated software to turn up everywhere putting the company at legal risk.

And no, I'm not an IT person.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Hmmm...I don't have the tools to do my job...so my job doesn't get done until the admin folks get around to installing the tools...and the admin people take weeks to even reply to an trouble call trying to get a WORK email address working...so yeah, I think it's fair to say local rights for my department are something we need. Considering our LAN staff has no clue what tools we need, and puts the corporate image on all machines whether it has usefull programs or not.

Even my manager doesn't even try to deal with the LAN staff to get stuff done. He just helps us hack into our systems or convince the local lan guy to give us local admin rights. AIM won't install on the base image we get. Easy to hack, they just copy system files to other directories and then hack the registry to point to the new location. AIM still looks for the files in the original directory, so we copy them back to there.

There are lots of other tools we use in our job that can't be installed without local admin privileges. Some of the machines here are nearly useless because they're so old there's no record of the admin passwords, and the LAN staff can't be bothered to reimage them with a new image.

 

[BoberFett]

I the lead programmer at a small company, and double as the net admin. It's only about 20 stations. I can't tell you how many times I've been pissed about people installing crap willy-nilly on their machines (almost all Win9x) and fscking things up. And then my boss thinks he knows about computers and demands Administrator privileges on the NT servers and he's manage to fsck quite a few computers. I get tired of reinstalls. A good admin has reasons for doing what they do.

 

[office boy]

Not to mention that many companies have VERY specific ways of installing programs, that the programs do not use by default.
Nothing worse then messy subdirs. (well except full one's)

The worst thing for me here is people listening to streaming radio. We have a slow internet connection that we pay for by the hour (ISDN in the boondocks) and i always have people calling me up and asking why their computer won't play music smoothly, they blame me, they blame the hardware... try blaming two 64K ISDN channels running at 70%-100% all day (both channels on, so we're being double billed) Then management, (the same guys that listen to the radio half the time) bitch about why the internet bill is so high, and wonder how we could have that much usage since that arn't even that many hours in the month :|

Any Admins know how I could not block it, but make it really slow for users. And at the same time not cut my bandwidth?

 

[office boy]

AIM is a tool you need for your job?

 

[dirtboy]

I let our staff use Win9x boxes, mainly due to hardware constraints. All too often I get a call or e-mail about their machine crashing or being screwed up in some fashion. I got out there to check it out and surely enough they have downloaded all kinds of crap from the Internet.

As an Admin, I don't have time for that kind of crap. I start to take it off and they throw a fit. I don't have time to explain why things like Webshots slows down their pc when they only have a 2mb video card and insist on having a photograpic background and/or screensaver (usually configured for less than 5 minutes to activate).

Those that don't load software don't have as many problems, because we test things out to make sure there are no compatibility issues or problems in advance. Most of my problems are with computers that have had crap loaded on them by experienced people.

IMHO turf, you should respect the Admin's and compan's wishes to do this and forget about what privileges you used to have. By passing or finding ways around security will only make things messy.

 

[graff]

I just got through hell trying to fix my machine at work. I had to wait FOREVER for the admin to come down and fix it. It seems that I have a much better understanding of NT than the IT people here. I am a co-op, but i've been working with this crap forever. I am in the animation department here. There is another co-op in the IT dept that &quot;tries&quot; to fix things. She doens't know what fdisk is or how to format or anything. After trying everything known to man, I finally got her down to my office to give me the admin pword so I could fix my machine myself. It would've been done a long time ago had they just let me do it from the start. My boss HATES that I could possibly know more than he does, being a studnet. He wasted two days of our time trying to fix the computer. I didn't say a word or give any suggestions, cause he'd get mad when I was right. Turns out the video card was bad and I got a new one today from dell. Went through all the waiting and getting pissed for nothing! I have admin access on my machine now, thank god.

 

[The Stigenator]

hear hear..

I have the same problem. People who are not admins give themselves admin priveleges, I cant help it I am the youngest.. I am only 21, and then they fsck up and I am having to come by after they does their fiasco on trying to fix what they fscked up.

I tell you sometimes we are not paid enough.

 

[randomlinh]

Admin on win9x is no fun... at school, that's what we had, and I helped w/ the admining stuff. So whenever I would go try and fix a problem, i find all this software and crap.... essentially, instead of wasting time to fix, i carried around the image disk... essentially a boot disk that lets me image over the network.

Even worse is when it's the TEACHERS that have this problem.. altho, never encountered and double offenders (i guess they were actually *smart*...)

 

[turf]

Ok winamp was a TERRIBLE example. Just the first thing that came to mind. However there are programs that I use to document maintenance on equipment that I work on, Core Automated Maintenance System and also a program that allows me to access a Federal database of parts and stock numbers to order parts, and Miken...I CAN'T GO A DAY WITHOUT THEM. Plus you have no idea who our admin people are or how they operate. Let me assure you, they take their D@MN sweet time... My goal is NOT to undermine the security or integrity of our network. As far as Netscape goes, unfortunately, one aspect of my job requires me to work with editing webpages, and since I am an atmitted HTML idiot, Netscape Composer has been my saving grace. Plus... you have no idea how much work I accomplish in a day, but it's most likely more than you. You have NO grounds to tell me to do MY D@MN job!!

Oh wait, my real plan is to Reverse Engineer the entire security structure of the network, so I can hack our server's subsystem and allocate all of it's resources to my own machine so I can then Host a dedicated server running Half Life (pirated of course)on our ATM for 50+ players, and have everyone on the LAN hooked in too. yada yada yada.....

PLEASE....Get Off IT, and get real.

I just want to have access to the programs I need so I CAN do my D@MN JOB!!

 

[tim0thy]

damn... this makes me think twice about becoming an admin. oh wait... yesterday, some b*tch made a comment that i don't do any work... maybe i'll go f*ck up her computer now.

sorry, i'm just a bit ticked off.