When? It was always advised not to do it. Beginning with Vista is was somewhat enforced.

Why? Because everyone blamed Microsoft for security holes. Yes, the OS design allowed things to happen (but the same OS design allowed us to do things like COM automation), but it turns out that the big problems were primarily third party software. Secondary issue was that everyone was running as administrator even though we'd be advised to run as Standard User. So with Vista, Microsoft enforced that and ramped up security with UAC. As with your security weenies, Microsoft initially went overboard with UAC, then relaxed it a bit with Win7.


>When did that become a 'rule'? And before you go off on me about 'standard practices' ... yeah, those aren't rules - they're guidelines.
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>Look... around here, most of us know what and what not to do on our machines and I'm sure there are many out there that, like me, get REAL dang tired of MS trying to hold our hands and force us into behaviors that actually make us more dangerous on our machines than we should be.
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>It's kinda like the draconian security weenies out there who insist on passwords being (as was the case one place I worked) exactly 14 characters long, with at least 1 capitol letter, 1 number and 1 extended character and these MUST be changed every 30 days. Congratulations, you've just moved most of your workforce into doing the very things you don't want them to do.