I am admitting my computer ignorance What does "administrator privleges" mean?

Question

I am admitting my computer ignorance What does "administrator privleges" mean?

Answer 1

Sometimes when a family shares a computer, say two parents and three kids, then the parents get the 'administrator priveleges'.  That means that they can change certain settings that their kids can't, or look onto their kids' documents, while the kids can't look onto their parents' documents.  Hope this helps!

Answer 2

It  means that this action or access is  not available for every user of the system. It generally comes up when you try to touch the password protected system files which has nothing to do with the normal user of the computers. This is mainly to do with the experts who can fix the problem in the computers or to work on the softwares and the special data of the computers.

Answer 3

While admitting my limited knowledge, I am trying to answer your question.

It means that the user who has been set to have administrative rights, can do certain more activities on the computer (depending on the operating system) - like install/uninstall s/w, set access permissions to files and folders and set user types for other users. These are the main tasks that a normal user can't do while the one with administrative privileges can.

While programming, in certain environments, the user needs to have certain administrative previleges to compile and run the code.

If you are talking about a s/w, it means that the user has administrative previleges to perform certain administrative activities - like taking a back up, creating/ enabling/disabling user accounts, granting/revoking rights to other users and so on.

Hope this helps. You could try searching on google or some website like that of microsoft. It will also help.