Getting Around The Admin Privileges

I know what this sounds like. Before you ban or block or post some smartass remark, hear me out. I'm trying to get around an adminstrator password on my work computer so I can install a couple of useful apps. Before I joined the company, most of the computers were fairly open. About a year ago, they hired an empolyee who took advantage of this an installed personal liscense software on her work computer for work-related use. Obviously this is illegal and the employee was warned. The employee persisted and eventually the company locked the computers down so that you could not install without administrator privileges. This applied to old and new employees. I started about 2 months ago and was given a locked computer. Shortly thereafter the employee who caused the lock down policy left for another position. During this time I began experiencing issues with my computer. This person explained why the computers were locked down when I expressed that it would waste less of his time if the computer wasn't locked. He then said, "Of course you know that there is a workaround right? You just need a windows boot disk. Then you don't need the password." This was the wink, wink, nudge, nudge way of saying as long as you don't do something stupid it's unofficially ok. My question is, is this true, can I use a boot disk and not have to get an admin password to install a program? I'm not looking to install pirated software or software that I own a personal liscense for, I'm looking to install useful tools such as CPU-Z or something similar and to make enhancements such as increasing the page file size. If it's true, how do I go about it? Are there other ways to achieve the same ends?