Windows – the difference between Skip and Don’t Copy buttons in Copy File dialog

If you didn't turn of User Account Control, by default in Windows 7 the Built-in Administrator account doesn't require privilege elevation, while users you create and put in Administrators group do.

That is if you want to do anything that requires Administrators rights with the account you created and placed in Administrators group you will have to either confirm the privilege elevation when requested by Consent UI or do run as Administrator by right clicking the application and selecting the option.

In case of MSI packets if you don't get the Consent UI, you have to start command prompt as Administrator (run as) and start the MSI from that command prompt session.

In case of system files that means the following:

If you lets say want to modify hosts file (or some other file that requires Administrator rights) with the account you created and placed in Administrators you will have to right click some text editor (like Notepad) and select run as Administrator and then open the hosts file from the File menu by selecting Open.

To expand upon Mr. Dave’s answer, %SystemRoot% is a built-in variable (along with a small handful of others like %SystemDrive%). That is, it is not actually defined in the environment variable store at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment in the registry.

On the other hand, %windir% is a regular variable and is defined in the variable store as %SystemRoot%. (There is no “real variable” counterpart to %SystemDrive%.)

Which to use doesn’t really matter, but you may run into problems with variable expansion in batch-files, in which case you could try the other one. (I don’t recall having problems with this specifically, but it’s worth keeping in mind.)

In addition, %SystemRoot% (and %SystemDrive%) are set during the installation process (when you choose the destination drive) and is thus available from the earliest point when Windows is being installed whereas %windir% is set at a later point during the install, so if you are creating some sort of custom installation (e.g., OEM, PE, etc.), you will want to use %SystemRoot%.