I am an I.S. technician for a credit union. We have several web applications that require us to run Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7 SP1.
Our users' Windows profiles are set up as Power Users and cannot have administrator privileges. The built-in Windows administrator profile is enabled and restricted for technician use only.
We have three models of workstations: Dell Vostro 270s, Dell Optiplex 780, and some brand new Dell Inspiron One 2020 All-in-One workstations.
All three workstation models are running Windows 7 SP1, with IE9, with all the same software, settings and policies.
We have one IE-only web application in question which works perfectly fine in our limited user profiles on the Vostro and Optiplex workstations, however, only on the new All-in-One workstations, there is one single page element within this web application that simply will not work when logged into a limited user profile. Most of the web application loads and works fine, except for one necessary "Payment" tab, as highlighted in red in this screenshot:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2ac47qwzsp10hvq/zxePAUiFpD/02_IE_Error_UserProfile.jpg
Strangely enough, this same portion of the application works perfectly fine when logged in to the administrator profile on the same workstation, so it seems that it cannot be a hardware/workstation issue. The IE settings and policies are identical under both profiles, and also match the settings and policies on the other workstation models. While troubleshooting, I tried executing Internet Explorer with "Run as Administrator" while logged in as the limited user, and the web application still did not work. Just for the sake of troubleshooting, I also tried adding the users to the workstation's Administrator group, but the site still did not work for the user.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2ac47qwzsp10hvq/pxSQ9SggcR/01_IE_Error_UserProfile_RunAsAdministrator.jpg
Then I instead executed Internet Explorer using the "Run as a different user" command while holding down Shift and right-clicking on the IE icon. I then used the exact same administrator credentials.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/klz8g3glu30fz48/03_IE_Error_UserProfile_RunAsAdministrator.JPG
When launching IE this way, the same portion of the web application works fine, just as it does when logged in to the Administrator profile, as shown below:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2ac47qwzsp10hvq/tPldMfeQ3U/04_IE_NoError_UseProfile_RunAsAnotherUser.jpg
From what I understand, using "Run as a different user → Administrator" versus "Run as Administrator" actually loads IE using the Administrator registry hive, rather than just granting the same privileges to the current user? What could this indicate? This isn't a solution itself as we cannot give our users the administrator password. What else can I do to try to solve this problem so that the our users can run IE normally within their own limited profiles and use this site as they should be able.
For now, I have used the third-party "runasspc" as a temporary work-around so employees can run this application as the administrator user when needed without knowing the password, however, this is an ugly hack because the IE favorites, downloads,
etc, all default to the C:\Users\Administrator directory, rendering the users' session downloads inaccessible from elsewhere in their Windows profile, and not allowing them to access their own IE favorites while running IE as the administrator user.
Thank you very much for your time and help.