Running without admin rights: As users, what can we do to get apps working (that demand admin rights)? [closed]

For applications that downright refuse to run the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit might help which enables you to define fixes for individual applications. This includes the whole range of shims the current compat database already uses for (on Vista) around 5000 applications. I managed to get one program to work with that but it was more like poking around in the dark instead of a foolproof method.

"The second most committed sin is apps that write to the LOCAL_MACHINE section of the Windows registry. Any app can read here, but to write here needs admin privileges. Apps should only save their user settings to the CURRENT_USER section of the registry, as a normal user can write here.
If it's writing its own configuration data to LOCAL_MACHINE then it's probably doing it under an entry with it (or it's company's) name under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\AppName
To fix this you can right-click the registry key (folder) with the software's name and select security, and then assign permissions to your user account, or the Everyone account.
For troubleshooting problems with apps running as a standard user Sysinternals (now Microsoft) Process Monitor is invaluable, it's an incredibly powerful tool and lets you monitor absolutely everything that's happening on your PC. A tutorial on using it won't fit here, but you'd want to set a filter for the app you're interested on and then filter on permission and access errors.
Edited to correct Process Monitor/Process Explorer confusion"