Power Management and Other Problems of the Non-Administrator

Power management is a real problem for non-administrators on Windows XP, but there are other problems running as user. I was looking up the registry keys needed to allow users to change those power settings when I found this great blog:

The Non-Admin blog - running with least privilege on the desktop

Anyway, here is the power management solution as posted on that blog:

Run Regedit.exe as an administrator
Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg
Right-click on the “GlobalPowerPolicy” key and choose “Permissions”.
Click on the “Advanced” button.
Click “Add”.
Type INTERACTIVE and click “Check names”, then OK.
Check the “Set value” and “Create Subkey” checkboxes in the “Allow” column, and click OK, then OK, then OK.
Do the same thing with the “PowerPolicies” key.

Bug in IE Proxy Auto Detect

Looks like there is a bug in the way automatic detection of proxy servers works with Internet Explorer. I've confirmed it on Windows 2003 SP1.

If you have enabled the option in IE to check for revoked server certificates, SSL sites fail. If you manually specify the proxy server, SSL sites work.

It appears the mechanism used for checking if the certificate is revoked can't automatically detect a proxy server. If you turn that option off (which is recommended for performance reasons) then you can live with automatic detection.

Here is some more info on IE proxy auto detect.

Google is Evil

I find it absolutely amazing that Google can turn down the U.S. Government when they are trying to protect their citizens, but will be complicit with the Chinese government when they are trying to repress their's.

Not that I wanted Google to cooperate with our Justice Department. But now what excuse do they have, when they are willing to censor search results for terms like "democracy" for another government?

Google has simply become evil in the search for profit. It sure didn't take long after going public.

Terminal Server and Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration

The key below will get rid of the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration message when set to 1.

This is useful when you have a Terminal Server and you enable the mode for administrators, but the warning shows up for users anyway.

The problem is caused because the default user account still has some tightened security applied. Most of this can be reversed with group policy, but this setting can't.

You have to open the default user registry hive as a file to edit this setting and have it apply to all new users.

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1659004503-2049760794-682003330-1107\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\IEHardenIENoWarn

REG_DWORD = 1