User Account type problem

I am using Windows 7 Professional with all the latest updates.

Having read what a terrible thing it is to use an account with
administrator privileges for normal use, I activated the Administrator
account and changed my account type to Standard but then found that I
couldn't even execute Windows Update: it did not ask me for a password
but simply told me that I needed administrator credentials. This was
plainly ridiculous, so I changed my account type back to administrator,
but now I can't even save downloaded files in the place where I always
used to save them: the only place it will let me save them is in my own
"personal" folder rather than on the drive I had dedicated to downloads.

How do I fix this problem?

Perce