Just the other day I was asked by a colleague, ” if our corporate laptops are protected that we do not have admin privileges, how are you able to do any development work?  I cannot do anything”.

That’s a great question.  However, MS Windows OS has gone over a few transformations and a lot of applications are written in a way that promotes usage w/o elevation.  Yet, some basic things are still puzzling. For example, user path variable.  The system path should be protected as it is set by admin installation of programs etc, but changing path for a user to ensure that one application can be started quickly w/o knowing the full path should be simple. But, it is anything but simple.

Going to User Accounts is not an option as you will quickly get an error screen either due to elevation restriction or basic GPO set by IT.  But there is another way. You can utilize the rundll32.exe to invoke the GUI directly.

rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables

I’ll continue exploring more ways to manage my workstation w/o elevation as i spend more time living with new fun policy.