Could someone please tell me...

[aneeshm]

... who has the right to access the top three access levels in Vista? I read recently that Vista has six levels of security and access, and that the administrator account can only access the bottom three. Who are the top three reserved for?

* Trusted Installer
* System
* High
* Medium
* Low
* Untrusted

The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.

Link

What gives?

[loinburger]

According to your link, the admin runs at the "high" level, which leaves only two unaccounted for. The top two are probably reserved for the operating system, e.g., instructions that enable/disable hardware memory protection are unavailable to the admin. The only legitimate reason you'd want access to these instructions is if you're doing operating systems / compiler research, in which case you probably aren't running Vista on your computer (or any other operating system, for that matter).

[DaShi]

Good, hopefully this will stop me from deleting key files during my regular purges.

[CivGeneral]

Though I am the only user on my laptop, so I dont have to worry about other people using my computer.

[loinburger]

The thing is that the stuff in the "system" group isn't anything you'd want to have access to. Do you honestly want access to the system commands that will disable interrupts? If so, and you're researching semaphores (or whatever), then god bless. Otherwise, leave the "disable interrupts" instructions alone and live with the fact that you're a "mere" high security user.