Cannot run programs as administrator

I have a few programs which require administrator privileges. I have tried running them normally... running them as administrator... I have even gone as far as to enable the admin account and then try running it. It is the same result every time... "You need to be administrator to run this program."

What is going on here? I tried google, and it seems like I am the only one running into this problem?

I tried taking ownership of the programs, too. No luck.

Hi there
just right mouse click in the Icon / .exe file and choose Run as Administrator. This will run the command / program "In elevated mode" . Logging on as administrator or giving youself admin priviledges dosn't work. It's not like being ROOT in a Linux or Unix system -- more like using SU or SUDO.

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks for the reply.

I have already tried both right clicking, and opening the program from an elevated window. I have exhausted all options I am aware of. It didn't work. The "Run as administrator" option is one of the first things I saw when I right clicked, so it was one of the first things I tried.

Any other ways to force a program to run as admin? I'm not exactly an expert, but I know quite a lot about computers, and I am a quick learner, so you won't scare me off with complicated steps.

is it possible you turned UAC off? if so, turn it back on UAC off causes nothing but problems.

if you click "run as administrator" does your screen dim and you get a popup asking you if you really wanna run the program as an admin? that's what's supposed to happen. if this DOES happen and it still doesn't work there are two possibilities:
1) the application is broken and does not detect correctly if it is run as an administrator or not
2) your installation is broken. you can go to control panel and check the user accounts if something seems wrong, but I guess you will have to reinstall (not repair!) windows and hope that the problem is fixed by that

I started by turning UAC off... then, after realizing it might be the issue, I tried turning it back on. I set it at every level all the way up to high, and it didn't make any difference. Something that struck me as odd, though, was that it didn't prompt for a reboot when I changed the UAC settings. That lead me to believe that the install might have been faulty. Is there a way to repair the installation without reinstalling? I have a lot of stuff on here already, and I've reinstalled 3 times already. (Long story. )

No, I get no popup like what you described on any of my installs. (2 x64, and 1 x86).

Of the three, though, this is the only one I am running into the administrator issues with. I used the same x64 disc for the other install, as well.

then it doesn't seem to save your UAC settings. because with UAC turned on you always get prompted when you try to run something as administrator. and when you set the UAC to it's highest level your screem gets dimmed when that prompt appears (it's just a basic "do you really want to run xyz as administrator" prompt).
if you can't run anything as administrator than of course if you change UAC settings they won't save because you need to be an admin to do that.
I'd advise you to manually set the UAC settings in the registry - but you can only use the registry as admin ...

so you seem kind of stuck.
as far as I know there is a repair option if you boot from the windows 7 disc, but I doubt that will fix the issues - but you can try it.

What program are you trying to run in elevated admin privileges? Someone else was having an issue of them not being an admin on the computer even though it said they were an admin. He booted into safe mode and logged into the admin account and changed his username to an admin from there. HE also took ownership of all files on the computer and never got the error message again. Try that and see if it helps?

It started off with a watermark removal, but it does the same thing with most of my video editing and home recording studio software as well.

Booting into safe mode does not change the way it acts... so I can't do anything that way.

I encountered this problem for the first time just recently when I tried to run something from the command window (this was the command > powercfg/hibernate off. Like you, I was the only user and had an admin account. Then I tried to put me on both an admin account and a standard user account, and logging onto the admin first before running but that did not help.

Originally Posted by fjack1415

I encountered this problem for the first time just recently when I tried to run something from the command window (this was the command > powercfg/hibernate off. Like you, I was the only user and had an admin account. Then I tried to put me on both an admin account and a standard user account, and logging onto the admin first before running but that did not help.

Hello and welcome to the forum.
First launch an elevated command prompt.
Click the StartOrb->All Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt (right click it and choose "Run As Administrator"
and try changing the forward slash (/) in your command syntax to a minus, dash, hyphen symbol (-) and see if that helps

Example: powercfg-h off

SOURCE: Powercfg Command-Line Options