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Best way to install programs?
Hey all! My first post here. Hopefully I can get some good answers!
I've been a long time XP user and avoided the move to Vista until very recently. I'm lucky enough to be able to use Windows 7 full version through Technet now, so I'm moving everything to that today.
My question is, when installing applications, it seems a lot of programs have trouble with the new Program Files and Program Files (x86) that Vista and 7 use. Because of the permissions, I suppose.
I installed World of Warcraft and it says to move the program somewhere else, because patches will not work properly if it's installed to the default "\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft" folder.
I would really like to use Defaults for everything, I don't want to install into seperate folders. Keeping things in \Program Files and \Program Files (x86) as they are by default is what I want to do.
If I install everything using "Run as Admin" fromt the right-click context menu, will I have problems down the road with permissions? Is it bad to do this? Should I always run the installer by just double-clicking on my current user (which is in the admin group anyway)?
I want to know the best installation practice to get the best security (use of UAC) but I don't want to gimp my programs so that I have to "Run as Admin" everytime I use them, or they need to patch, etc.
What's the best method of installing things on Vista and Windows 7 to get the best mix of security, but still use the default installation locations?
Currently as a safety, I just installed things to their own folders I made. For example:
\Games\World of Warcraft
\Games\Guild Wars
\Programs\Mozilla Firefox
\Programs\Sony Vegas
And so forth. This way I'm avoiding the "\Program Files" and "\Program Files (x86)" folders. Is it ok to do this? I feel I'm basically bypassing some of the Windows 7 security features by doing this, but wondering if I HAVE to so that my apps can get the proper permissions to freely update as needed.
Sorry for the long post, but I've been looking around on this and haven't really found definitive answers. I'm sure I'll have more questions for any responders as well.