Automatic Updates for Users with Local Administrative Privilege & Users without Local Administrative Privilege aka Normal Users
In this Article, I will explain how Automatic Client behaves with the logged in user, if the user is part of LOCAL ADMINISTRATOR and vice-versa.
Users with Local Administrative Privilege:
AU client activity is transparent to all those users with local admin privilege.
They can see all those notification balloons.
They will be prompted for AU Option 2 & 3 and 4.
Most important, they can delay or postpone the reboot.
Normal Users or Users without Local Administrative Privilege:
To normal users, AU Client activity is hidden.
They can’t see all those notification balloons.
They will not be prompted of any of the AU OPTIONS.
AU options 2 & 3 will not work for normal users.
They cannot postpone the reboot as the NO options will be grayed out.
With the release of WSUS a new setting is added for users without local admin privilege, "Allow non-administrators to receive update notifications" which specifies whether, when logged on, non-administrative users will receive update notifications based on the configuration settings for Automatic Updates. If Automatic Updates is configured, by policy or locally, to notify the user either before downloading or only before installation, these notifications will be offered to any non-administrator who logs onto the computer.
The registry dword value is 'ElevateNonAdmins' and if it is set to 1 then logged on, non-administrative users will receive update notifications based on the configuration settings for Automatic Updates.
"ElevateNonAdmins"=dword:00000001
MORE INFORMATION
WSUS: Script to Manually Configure Automatic Update Client (WUA) for WSUS in a workgroup environment
http://msmvps.com/blogs/athif/articles/Manually_Configure_WUA.aspx
Automatic Update Client Versions History
http://msmvps.com/blogs/athif/archive/2005/06/15/Automatic_Update_Client_Versions_History.aspx