Some programs won't start/install without running as administrator

2

After upgrading my Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro I'm having trouble when trying to install certain programs (e.g. PyCharm, JRE) without right clicking the .exe and selecting "Run as Administrator". Also, certain programs won't start if I don't run them as an administrator (e.g. Dropbox). I should mention that my user is an Administrator on my machine, and that this issue occurs on all my machines which were upgraded from Windows 7, but not on my machines on which I performed a fresh install of Windows 10.

Tried to entirely disable UAC (through Windows' registry), this solves the problems above, but then I fail to run Windows Metro apps (such as calc.exe :-) )

Any suggestions?

MatanB

Posted 2015-12-18T09:34:52.200

Reputation: 43

2Disabling UAC is a terrible idea – Vinayak – 2015-12-18T10:15:52.870

Dropbox (the latest version) doesn't require administrator privileges to run on Windows. – Vinayak – 2015-12-18T10:17:39.723

Are you using the latest versions of all applications? – Vinayak – 2015-12-18T10:19:09.120

Yes, using latest versions of all applications. Dropbox is just one of the problematic programs, many others fail to run / install without running them as admin – MatanB – 2015-12-18T11:17:45.367

Try running sfc /scannow and if that doesn't help, see if dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth works. – Vinayak – 2015-12-18T11:31:35.223

The former reports "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.", the later reports "No component store corruption detected." – MatanB – 2015-12-18T11:52:22.397

Can you provide the install log of any of the applications that won't install? (When you don't run them as administrator) – Vinayak – 2015-12-18T12:52:53.867

You are aware that Windows 7 and Windows 10 behave differently when it comes to the default permissions of any process you start as a user right? Unless you specifically escalate the permissions of a process it will not automatically have administrator permissions. – Ramhound – 2015-12-18T18:11:02.080

@Ramhound this still does not explain why on machines on which Windows 10 is freshly installed I can just double click an installation executable and it will run correctly, and on those upgraded machines the same executable will fail. – MatanB – 2015-12-19T14:08:19.683

Answers

2

OK, found the source of the problem. I found out that the local temp folder (C:\Users[MY_USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Temp) was owned by SYSTEM instead of my username, and it didn't have any READ/WRITE/EXECUTE permissions assigned to my user. Adding full control permissions to my user solved the problem.

MatanB

Posted 2015-12-18T09:34:52.200

Reputation: 43

Asked: 2015-12-18T09:34:52.200

Viewed: 20 355 times

Active: 2015-12-25T12:39:25.220