Run scan as administrator?

[Exerciser]

My (rough) understanding of antimalware is that scans are automatically run using some special account that has (almost?) universal access. The System account comes to mind from past readings about this.

From what I observe, I am concerned that this is not what happens for Spybot S&D. When I start a Spybot S&D scan from a nonadministrator account, I do not see a special account doing the scan in the task manager. I sort the processes by CPU usage and SpybotSD.exe is the majority user by far. However, it is run under the non-administrator account. Does this mean that it will not scan as thoroughly as running it from an administrator account?

[j62janet]

:scratch:I've got to malwhere on my lap top, it tells me I need to become an administrator as well, I've done what it says with the start menu, but I'm still not recognized as the 'Administrator' so I can't remove the threats to my lap top, can someone help me as well?
I look forward to receiving any replies, and answers, I'm stuck! thank you, j62janet:confused::thanks:

[cootmaster]

were u talking bout this? (http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=55946)

for vista /7

[Exerciser]

Not quite. I realize that I can start Spybot S&D as another user. However, if I started normally from a non-administrator account, does it scan as thoroughly as if I scanned from an administrator account, or does it not scan some areas?

[spybotsandra]

Hello,

You just have to run Spybot-S&D on one user account in order to destroy all the bad threats.The best for this would be the administrator account. In order to destroy single user specific threats like cookies you have to run Spybot on each account.

Best regards
Sandra
Team Spybot

[Exerciser]

Thank you, Sandra. That is exactly what I was asking. From your answer, I infer the following

1. The scan runs with the authority of the account from which it is launched.

2. Running as administrator gives the elevated privileges needed to access a greater portion of the system.

3.That still doesn't allow the process to access user accounts.

For Windows 7, point #2 is not the same as running as "another user" and then specifying an administrator account. That does not give the same level of elevated privilege as selecting "Run as Administrator" from the context menu.