"Admin rights"

[Khormin]

"Vortex is not intended to be run as administrator!" messages have started to pop up, with some extremely accurate advice about not running Vortex as administrator.

 

Unfortunately, it's not being run as administrator.

http://prntscr.com/k0lrk1

[Tannin42]

The message appears only once, if you continue it won't show up again.

 

The screenshot you've shown doesn't actually prove Vortex isn't run as admin, it just shows that the exe isn't set up to enforce it.

 

Unfortunately it's not exactly easy for an application to determine if it's run as admin - vortex approximates that by querying filsystem information that should not be available to a regular user account.

If you're actually running Vortex as a regular user account and get this message your system may have seriously broken security settings.

What Windows version is this? Windows 10?

[Khormin]

7 x64. Hasn't been set up as admin, I'm not running as admin account, and neither the exe nor shortcut push for it which is why I brought up the issue. You're right about it only being once, though.

[Grestorn]

Did you maybe disable UAC? That would also cause this. And since you can read that UAC is evil and useless all over the internet (repeated by people without any clue), this wouldn't be too surprising.

[Tannin42]

Actually I don't think disabling UAC would cause this.

What vortex does (in the background) is call

"fsutil dirty query c:" (or whatever the letter of your system drive is) and then see if it returns "access denied" (these command line tools don't use UAC, they simply fail if the user doesn't have the necessary permissions).

It is my understanding that no windows version should allow you to run that command without admin rights.

[duckyduckyquackquack]

I've noticed that Vortex can't launch external applications if they are set to run as Administrator. F4SE Loader being the best example, on my PC if it's not set to run as administrator, when you try to launch it, it just opens the default Fallout 4 Launcher. Unless Vortex is set to also run as administrator trying to launch F4SE from the dashboard just does nothing, no messages, no popups, Vortex just sits there silently and doesn't even tell you why it can't launch the program.

[Grestorn]

Actually I don't think disabling UAC would cause this.

What vortex does (in the background) is call

"fsutil dirty query c:" (or whatever the letter of your system drive is) and then see if it returns "access denied" (these command line tools don't use UAC, they simply fail if the user doesn't have the necessary permissions).

It is my understanding that no windows version should allow you to run that command without admin rights.

 

If you disable UAC, an admin account basically becomes a permanent admin account, i.e. every single process is running with full admin rights.

 

I haven't actually tried it, but I'd assume that fsutil would work right away when UAC is disabled. Did you try that implicitly?

[Tannin42]

Ohhh, yeah, you're right I guess...

 

Well tbh, if you run with an administrative account and disabled UAC then the warning is entirely appropriate so I don't see why we should disable it in that case.

 

@duckyduckyquackquack: It would have been nice if you had reported this as a vortex feedback or at least in a separate thread instead of an comment in an unrelated thread. But you are right, this is currently broken :(

[Sorpaijen]

Hate to display my ignorance all over the internet, but here goes... I have never paid attention to Admin rights before since (it seems) I only have ONE user, and that is "Administrator". I do not "log on" to my computer, it just boots straight to Windows. When I try to Switch User, it just lists ONE user: the Administrator.

 

I'm more than a little concerned by the suggestion (I'm inferring) that somehow ALWAYS being Administrator, always running programs AS Administrator (since, again, that's the only user set up) is somehow putting my system at risk. I've not had any issues YET (knock on wood) with malicious programs, etc but I might've been lucky all along.

 

Short version: am I -really- in "danger" if I install Vortex with my one and only Administrator account, and if so, how do I go about ~not~ being Administrator? I've seen the "Run as Administrator" option when right clicking a file, it's just never been an issue since (once more for those in back) I already AM logged on as Administrator and hence (I believe) everything I run, runs as Administrator.

 

Getting a new Windows 10-enabled PC in a week or so (this one is still Windows 7), and I'd like to get that one set up properly... Thanks!

 

EDIT: Created a new, standard user account but (of course) all my personalized stuff is gone; fine for my new PC to start out that way next week (now that I know I ~don't~ want to be logged in as Administrator all the time) but I reeeeeally do not want to go to the hassle of setting everything up for this new Standard user account. So I guess I'm wondering if Vortex CAN be installed as Administrator so I can play around and learn it on this older rig, or if it'll just be a waste of time to try.

[Tannin42]

It's good that you ask this question, it is actually a bit confusing. When you set up a windows system like normal the first user you create is an administrator account.

But that doesn't mean that everything that account does is done "as administrator". Like just because a cop has a badge and uniform doesn't mean he can't do anything as a civilian anymore.

 

Normally your account, even the "administrator" account is limited, for example it can't create files in c:\program files and thereby can't install applications just like that. When you try to do that an (uac) dialog shows up asking you to confirm that this application (the installer) is allowed to make changes to your system.

This is an important security feature. Many people think that this is to protect you from yourself by making you confirm changes but that's not the point, it's about protecting you from malicious software.

 

If you run an administrator account and disable uac you actually run everything as admin and yes, then you are really in danger because then every software you start also has unrestricted access to your system all the time. If anything you use is malicious that software is able to do anything on your system, including spreading itself everywhere, like disabling your virus scanner or adding exceptions so the malware doesn't get detected any more, installing a keylogger that then starts when your system starts and sends everything you type including passwords and credit cards to criminals, installing a botnet client that then uses your system to criminally harm others and, depending on the laws in your country, that may make you a co-perpetrator due to your negligence.

But also just bugged software may then accidentally delete/overwrite files that the software isn't supposed to be able to access or open doors for other malicious software. For example a bugged web browser may allow malicious websites to harm your system. And Vortex is a webbrowser (chrome) in the backend which is practically always a few months outdated.

 

With UAC at the very least you get a dialog "application x is trying to make changes to your system" and when you don't know why it would do that you can refuse. Without it you would never know something is going on.

 

Yes, it does make things more inconvenient, not just for you. My life would be so much easier if I just told people "run vortex as admin" because everyone in this community would apparently do it and it would immediately "fix" 2/3 of all bug reports I get and make a lot of code unnecessary. But it would weaken the security of your PC and I don't like compromises in that regard.

Again, just because you're the only user on your PC and even if you're just using it to play games, you can still get into actual real-world trouble from malware.