I work part time as a network/system administrator for a small school. The school uses a commercial student information system that gets updated quarterly. After the server is updated users cannot access the SIS without an administrator manually running the update installer on each machine. Its been this way for as long as anyone can remember.
My predecessor(s) went to great lengths to lock down the desktops. I assume to try to prevent users from accidentally installing viruses and such (Their efforts failed I might add). This appears to be the reason the SIS cannot automatically update each desktop without an administrator logged in. After a recent update its become worse. Now users can't even use the program as normal without elevated privileges, let alone install updates.
Being unable to locate the setting(s) that are restricting the users, I've had to manually add each user to the administrators group for their own local machine. Of course, this means if one malfunctions that user can't use another user's machine until I get it repaired.
I'm assuming the security setting(s) I need to change are define in group policy editor but I can't seem to find where. Any help would be appreciated.
P.S. In case you haven't guessed, I'm not trained in Windows administration. I've learned enough by reading help files to get by but my day job is software development.