What is protected mode

In Windows XP or 2000, you can run applications in two modes: as administrator or as normal user

In Windows Vista,there is another, new, mode: Protected Mode. Protected Mode is a new feature in Vista, and is one of the pieces of User Account Control (UAC). Protected mode is designed to protect the computer by restricting the parts of the system that code running in the IE process can affect. If a malicious web page exploits a code-injection bug in IE or an IE plugin, that code will not be able to do damage to the system.

In Windows Vista, Internet Explorer runs by default in Protected Mode.

In Protected Mode IE writes/reads special Low versions of the Cache, TEMP folder, Cookies and History:

• Cache: c:\users\jdoe\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Low
• Temp: c:\users\jdoe\AppData\Local\Temp\Low
• Cookies: c:\users\jdoe\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\Low
• History: c:\users\jdoe\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History\Low

As Internet Explorer can run in both normal and protected mode, in practice History and Cookies are each stored in two folders. For, example, History is stored in the following two places:

• Normal mode: c:\users\jdoe\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History
• Protected mode: c:\users\jdoe\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History\Low