Burning CD/DVDs as unprivileged user

After the last reinstallation of Windows (both at home and at work), I decided that from this day forth, I’d be working as unprivileged user (ie not as local administrator). Now, working as unprivileged user is some kind of relief (since not every program is able to wreak havoc within your computer), but also somewhat of a burden.

Up until now, I had serious troubles burning CDs and/or DVDs as unprivileged user. Basically InfraRecorder refused to work at all. Only way that I had left, was copying the ISO to my local disk and then use runas in conjunction with InfraRecorder, to execute as Administrator.

Yesterday, I sat down and searched the Net for any kind of information. After a short while, I stumbled upon this:

Execute secpol.msc as Administrator. You can configure this security setting by opening the appropriate policy and expanding the console tree as such: “Computer ConfigurationWindows SettingsSecurity SettingsLocal PoliciesSecurity Options“. Toggle “Devices: Restrict CD-ROM access to locally logged-on user only” to enabled. After logging of and logging back on, you should be allowed to use the CD-drive as unprivileged user.

Connecting to a remote console with MSTSC 6.0.6001

Well, as one can read in about every damn post you can find for that topic, the /console switch is now silently ignored, as well as the rdp file option “connect to console:i:1“.

Now, what you don’t find anywhere (only in some scenario explanation), that it is allowed to specify the mode (ie /console previously and now /admin) within the full address parameter.

Scenario: In the RDC client UI, you specify Computer_name /console in the Computer box (where Computer_name represents the name of the remote computer to which you want to connect), and then click Connect.

Behavior: The /console switch is silently ignored. You will be connected to a session to remotely administer the server. (For more information about the Windows Server 2008 behavior, see the “Behavior when you connect to a server that does not have Terminal Server installed” section of this article.)

So my rdp connection file basically looks like this: