What is the difference between the Administrator account and a User account that has administrator privilage?

Question

The Backstory

Wife has a multiplayer Minecraft Server that she runs Tectonicus (a map generating program) against. Tectonicus is set up to use OpenGL (aparently ONLY OpenGL). When attempting to run it as a user with Administrator privileges (tried both vanilla and Run as Administrator) it fails when accessing OpenGL. When running it in the Administrator account it works.

The Question

My questions really pertains to the file and resource permission context in the difference between the Administrator account and a User Account with Admin privileges?

Bottom Line

She wants this to be run on a schedule to auto refresh changes in the map, and I am against getting into the Administrator account to do things if I don't absolutely have to. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

In Windows there is a specific group of users called the "Administrators" group who are allowed to do advanced actions such as adding other users and so on. If your account "Joe" is an administrator account, then "Joe" is in the group of "Administrators".

The "Administrator" account is just a special case of this. "Administrator" is a user who is in the group of "Administrators". He has his own "My Documents", "Desktop" and "Temporary Internet Files" just like any other user.

What has probably happened in your precise case is that the program was installed by "Administrator" and has files installed to "his" local user settings. By trying to run the program as a different user - even a different administrator, you won't pick up those user settings and the program might decide not to run as a result.

The solution is to re-install the program on your own account so that when you run it, it will be able to see those settings in your own local user storage.