gotomeeting, webex, etc. installation without admin rights

[meanoldman]

I have searched and can't find a solution, or at least complete info to figure out what the solution is

I've just started rolling out Windows 7 PCs to my users and one hitch that has come up is the inability to install things like Webex and Gotomeeting clients without elevated privileges. We are a pretty small company, so I don't have much worry about walking around to peoples computers and installing as needed, but many of my users travel a lot, on topo of the fact that new versions come out pretty frequently. As can be expected I do not want to give my users administrator privileges, 1) because they are careless, and 2) because they will install who knows what.

So, my question is, is there a simple solution for this? Is there a setting in the admin template for Windows 7 that will allow users or power users to install these clients without elevated privileges?

All systems are 64bit Windows 7 pro, IE9.

And this was never an issue with XP. Annoying.

As a side question, all my users have Network Config Operator privileges, but for some reason they can't make any network changes? What gives? Again, never a problem on XP.

Thank you

[MikeBY]

Having the same issue with IE plug-ins here. It seems you need admin rights. I haven't been able to find a solution within Win7. There are 3rd party apps that will allow elevation of privilege, but I'm trying to avoid going that route, and I certainly don't want to provide admin rights in general.

Also finding you need admin rights to tune Cleartype settings as well. I'm not lucky enough to be able to walk around to a small number of users.

Have you figured something out?

[meanoldman]

Yeah, I wanted to avoid the whole elevation thing. I know once my users figure out that have the ability to specify an alternative user with elevated privileges they will go hog wild and install whatever pops up. Yes, we've seen it before. Or worse, they will figure out they can log on as the elevated user and will just run as that user all the time.

[meanoldman]

So, I can push the Go To Meeting plugin via a GPO, but can't find an .msi installer for Webex. Even so, if a user is on the road and not able to update their computer through our netwrok, they may have to try and install something like Webex or G2M on their own. Short of granting all of my users elevated rights, at least as local users I think they can install/enable these plugins if they have the domains in their trusted sites list.

So, I am not really up on how to push a registry key to the individual computes, and even so, will that work?

I think I can add the domain to the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\windows\CurrentVersion\Int ernet Settings\zonemap\domains list. Once I do that on one computer, then export the key, I would push that to the computers by what method?

All are Windows 7, all are domain members Windows Server 2003 AD.