"RivaTuner":http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner is a tweaking program for Windows used to change some more obscure parameters of modern GPUs. It's main uses are overclocking and monitoring, but it's feature list is truly impressive. I mainly use it to change the fan speed settings on the GTX 260 in my gaming rig (the default profile is not aggressive enough for my taste, letting the GPU temperature run up to 85 degrees before the fan starts to kick in in ernest).
One problem I always had with RivaTuner is that it requires Administrator privileges to run. It needs those to load a device driver that is then used to communicate (and manipulate) the GPU driver and some parts of the graphic card. Since my normal user account does not have administrative privileges I had to use the "Run As" feature to start RivaTuner to allow it to set my fan parameters.
It turns out this is not really necessary, and that there is a way to run the RivaTuner frontend as a normal user. Here's how.
h3. WARNING
The following instructions involve editing sensitive parts of the Windows registry. Getting this wrong may render your Windows installation unbootable or harm your system in other ways. If you are not comfortable with the registry editor do not attempt to do this.
h3. Instructions
- Install RivaTuner (well, duh).
- Start RivaTuner at least once (as an Administrator)
- Log in as a user with administrative rights
- Start the registry editor
- Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RivaTuner32
- Change the key
Start
to 1
- Reboot
What this does is to instruct Windows to load the RivaTuner device driver during system startup, so it is already loaded when a user logs in. Seeing this, RivaTuner will not attempt to load the driver again, but connect to the driver as a normal user (which works).
h3. Advantages
With this change RivaTuner can be run as a normal user
h3. Disadvantages
The RivaTuner device driver will always be loaded, even when RivaTuner will not be used. This may lead to problems with other drivers, and disabling the device driver again requires another go at the registry.