Granting restricted permission roles As well as the three standard roles for a D7 site, I have created a role for a lesser admin / content creator.  This role is essentially an administrator role with some of the juicy bits taken away.  

I would like that users assigned this role can manage other users, but I need to restrict it so that they cannot assign or remove the administrator role, or edit an administrator's profile and account.  I can't see a way to do that on the standard installation, is there a module that could help me?

Edit:
I have looked into the userprotect module.  While it does prevent a lesser admin from editing an administrator, it does not prevent them from granting the administrator role on themselves.
As you mentioned, User protect should work well. Combine this with Role Delegation to restrict what roles they can assign.

Might also be worth keeping an eye on the Administer Users by Role module, although there is no D7 port yet (in progress here).

Let me know how it turns out as I'm going to be solving this issue on the site I'm working on soon.