"Admin rights"

[Grestorn]

Nice posting, Tannin, and this should be part of "Windows 101" for everyone. You should put that as a sticky on this forum :)

[Sorpaijen]

Indeed, thank you for the info. I DO get the UAC pop ups asking me if i want to let this program do this or that, so I guess there's still that degree of security. On my new PC (and apparently as part of windows 10 in general) I think I will be -forced- to create a non "administrator" user account, which is fine for a clean, new PC. I just was dreading re-configuring my old rig to match its previous personalizations. Since I'll only have it for another week (hopefully) I'll let my brother worry about setting up Windows 10 and a new user account when I bequeath it to him.

 

For me, I'll just wait until the new PC arrives and install Vortex fresh on that one --- Gopher's tutorial videos make it seem straightforward enough to use, so I should have no issue (here's hoping!). Thanks again for the clarification / information. I wish there WERE a "windows 101" kind of information source when one first acquires a computer. :)

[stoyickarage]

I get a message Admin rights detected even if i dont run it as administrator

[Grestorn]

Did you disable UAC? How do you start Vortex?

[Kboz]

Hi, I'm Anders. First time poster.

 

I run a single user pc (win10). It was set up with one account which is a administrator account i.e. me.

 

When installing Vortex for the first time i heeded the message about not installing under an admin account so i changed my account setting to a standard account instead and went ahead and installed Vortex, no problems.

 

Trouble is i have now decided that for irrelevant reasons that Vortex is not for me i would rather go back to Nexus MM.

 

But!... I can't.

 

I can not reinstall NMM without being an admin, i cant do a lot of things now and guess what? i cant change my account type back to admin status :huh: Why? because only admins can change account status's.

 

I googled this issue last night (Aussie time) and found about 20 different ways to change back to admin status and my pc gave me about a dozen error codes and messages to say i couldn't do that. Most of the messages were saying "you cant do that without admin privileges" Doh!

 

I even went as far as contacting Microsoft help and having a guy remotely take over my pc and run through different scenarios trying to reestablish my admin rights (which were the same procedures i went through before) but to no avail.

 

He said the only way was to do a backup and reset of my pc, fair enough i said, he gave me some brief instructions and left me to it. Guess what? You cant do a back up and reset without frickn damn admin rights.. Aaarrgghh!

 

Now, hindsight is a wonderful thing as they say and if i had created another user account while still an admin and installed vortex under that i'd be fine, also if i hadn't uninstalled NMM i would also be ok (sort of, id still need admin for other stuff) but i didnt so here we are.

 

I know that this is ultimately a windows issue rather than a Vortex issue but this all started because i wanted to install Vortex (Its not Vortex's fault, it didnt cause this i know that) but im wondering if others have this issue i.e followed the advice, changed their mind but cant reinstall NMM.

 

Its this particular scenario that prompts me to post here. If anyone can help where google and microsoft cant I would love to hear from you, Thank you. Oh! and all the flamers too, cant wait to hear from you :dance:

[HadToRegister]

How to enable the hidden administrator account

 

See if that works.

[Wolfboi]

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.

This is a fantastic answer and very informative. However, it doesn't answer the main question, at least for me, which is how to go about installing after receiving this msg. Like another poster, I have a single account on my pc (win7). I have admin rights. I'm not right clicking on the Vortex exe and saying open as admin, I'm just saying open and I get that msg. So can I safely install it, or do I have to make a new account or do something to my current account or what? I'm looking at install videos, but none seem to be addressing this issue.

[Tannin42]

I don't understand the question "how to go about installing after receiving this msg".

This topic is about a message users are receiving after they installed Vortex when they try to start it, so I can't be sure what message you're referring to.

 

For the installation, once, the installer should open up the UAC system dialog (something along the lines of "Do you want to allow this application to make changes ... Vortex"). When starting Vortex you should get no dialog.

 

If however you didn't receive the UAC dialog and instead on startup get the dialog "Vortex shouldn't be run as admin" then you have a non-standard windows config where UAC is disabled. How you enable it is a bit system dependent so I don't want to give a step-by-step guide but you can seach the internet for one of the many "how to disable UAC" guides and do the inverse.

 

Then, keep note of all websites that had such a guide and make sure you never take PC advise from them...

[Wolfboi]

I don't understand the question "how to go about installing after receiving this msg".

This topic is about a message users are receiving after they installed Vortex when they try to start it, so I can't be sure what message you're referring to.

 

For the installation, once, the installer should open up the UAC system dialog (something along the lines of "Do you want to allow this application to make changes ... Vortex"). When starting Vortex you should get no dialog.

 

If however you didn't receive the UAC dialog and instead on startup get the dialog "Vortex shouldn't be run as admin" then you have a non-standard windows config where UAC is disabled. How you enable it is a bit system dependent so I don't want to give a step-by-step guide but you can seach the internet for one of the many "how to disable UAC" guides and do the inverse.

 

Then, keep note of all websites that had such a guide and make sure you never take PC advise from them...

I've downloaded the recommended one step installer. When I open it, I get the standard UAC warning, 'are you sure you wanna do this?' sorta thing. When I say run, it begins to install. The install window bar completes, the Vortex logo appears, and then I get the warning above. The error window is entitled 'Admin Rights Detected' and the text below says 'vortex is not meant to be run as administrator, if you're doing it because you're having permission issues, please stop, you're just making it worse,' etc, etc. I then have the options to quit the install, or ignore the warning. I'm unsure how to proceed, so I hit quit, which cancels the install. So, as someone working with a single account on win7, which is admin by default because it's the only account, should I hit 'ignore' and everything will be fine, or are there additional steps I have to take to make sure that Vortex will run properly?

[HadToRegister]

 

I don't understand the question "how to go about installing after receiving this msg".

This topic is about a message users are receiving after they installed Vortex when they try to start it, so I can't be sure what message you're referring to.

 

For the installation, once, the installer should open up the UAC system dialog (something along the lines of "Do you want to allow this application to make changes ... Vortex"). When starting Vortex you should get no dialog.

 

If however you didn't receive the UAC dialog and instead on startup get the dialog "Vortex shouldn't be run as admin" then you have a non-standard windows config where UAC is disabled. How you enable it is a bit system dependent so I don't want to give a step-by-step guide but you can seach the internet for one of the many "how to disable UAC" guides and do the inverse.

 

Then, keep note of all websites that had such a guide and make sure you never take PC advise from them...

I've downloaded the recommended one step installer. When I open it, I get the standard UAC warning, 'are you sure you wanna do this?' sorta thing. When I say run, it begins to install. The install window bar completes, the Vortex logo appears, and then I get the warning above. The error window is entitled 'Admin Rights Detected' and the text below says 'vortex is not meant to be run as administrator, if you're doing it because you're having permission issues, please stop, you're just making it worse,' etc, etc. I then have the options to quit the install, or ignore the warning. I'm unsure how to proceed, so I hit quit, which cancels the install. So, as someone working with a single account on win7, which is admin by default because it's the only account, should I hit 'ignore' and everything will be fine, or are there additional steps I have to take to make sure that Vortex will run properly?

 

 

Did you run the installer as an administrator?

I'm the admin on my system, and the only time I saw that warning is when I purposely tried to run Vortex as an Admin.