run as administrator question

[BuzzKillington]

I've come across a few weird problems with AIM and a friend has come across a similar issue with Google Chrome.

Sometimes on Vista, AIM 5.6 would only open if I right clicked and ran as admin. If I didn't, it would "run" but wouldn't actually pop up, yet it'd show in the running processes. I'd have to close the processes and run as admin and it'd pop right up.

A friend recently started having issues with Google Chrome where it wouldn't open but I told her to run as admin, and sure enough it worked.

She asked what it meant and I didn't really have an answer. Is this some sort of bug with Vista? What does "running as admin" actually tell the computer that makes it magically run even when you're already on an admin account?

[crenn]

All programs are only run as standard level unless they request elevated level or are forced to use elevated level.

[slaveofconvention]

Running as admin basically tells the OS to lower it's defences and give the program more rights. This shouldn't really cause any problems with trusted software but something nasty could cause havoc with admin rights. In theory, once admin rights are granted, the software has access to and permissions to change the core system files and or remove or install new software etc

[BuzzKillington]

Why would the system think a web browser needs higher authorization though? My only guess is if the UA doesn't have admin privileges and the browser needed to update or something.

[x88x]

My guess is this. Vista was MS's first attempt at a proper admin-separation system and they didn't quite get everything right. I ran Vista for a while and would occasionally run into something weird like that..I ended up just always running in Admin mode.

[Luke122]

Is the user account set to "make my files and folders private"?

I've seen that cause issues with applications that use the temp folder, such as browsers..

If you would prefer to keep the folders private, then you might be able to just change the security on the %temp% folder to allow read/write access.

[Konrad]

I find the Take Ownership (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/) (aka Microsoft File Ownership) hack works most of the time in forcing the UA to play nice.

Don't use the script indiscriminately; as it's written it recurses all files in all subdirectories and it takes ownership away from other users (including the OS).

I've had success with uninstall, restart, reinstall. A bit of a pain, but it does often work. Sometimes you can't install version upgrades or components because once the software has removed the old version the UA prevents the new version from overwriting "protected" files.

[BuzzKillington]

Thanks guys.