another way to become admin on vista

I have tried to become admin in several different ways so I can have full control of installing programs with no problems but I am still having problems. I have disabled the UAC and created a admin account (by opening CMD and enabling admin) and I am still having problems installing some programs as I get the "Unable to open program. If you are logged on with limited privileges, please log off, log back on as Administrator and try again." Is there anything else I can do to become admin.

Hi, jdc5490, and Welcome to the Vista x64 forums.

Although this is the response that the program gives, the actual problem probably lies more with the fact that it is trying to store its settings in the same folder it is installed in - namely %ProgramFiles% or %ProgramFilesx86% (on most computers, these folders are C:\Program Files\ and C:\Program Files (x86)\ - the second example is only present in 64bit versions of Windows. That folder tree is heavily guarded against possible detrimental actions, such as program alteration, file alteration, file creation, etc. because the only Vista 'user group' to have write privileges to any folder in those trees is the Trusted Installer, or the Administrator group.

Even though *you* are logged into an admin account, you do not have full administrative privileges, unless you unhide the built in Administrator account. Therefore, the program is not running with administrative privileges that it needs to perform those actions that it is going to perform.

The best thing to do in cases like this is to run the program as admin - you can set the program to always ask for administrative privileges by right clicking on the shortcut to the program and selecting Properties, and then in the Compatibility tab, check Always run as administrator. Since you have UAC disabled you should not get a prompt for this, but the program will now run with elevated privileges.

That being said, I ***highly*** recommend that you run Vista with UAC enabled. Unless you are performing mission critical data analysis using a legacy program that *needs* to be able to write its settings to the Program Files directory, there is simply no use to not having UAC enabled - it will save you in the long run - one example - See this post at Calendar of Updates - because it mentions a 'minor' detail from a news article about UAC that is extremely important - and that is how UAC can help prevent rootkit infections.

If you are new to Vista and UAC, post back for some tips on how to use it effectively, and how to make the most of your really old programs that don't seem to want to run in Vista - and furthermore, be sure to check out the Tutorials - Vista Forums because there is a *lot* of good information there on how to work with Vista and make Vista work for you.

thank you for responding so quickly as I am trying to get this program installed tonight. I did just as you said but I am still having problems. I am not sure if it is because when I start the program, it starts another program to use its auto run file and i have to manually click on that but i do not have access to run admin in the starter program.

Weird. I the original program is running with administrative privileges, then it is supposed to be granting the same privileges to any child processes it spawns.

What is the program, exactly, and what does it do, and what are you trying to accomplish? Are you sure the program is Vista compatible to begin with? Could the 'starter' program as you mentioned actually be calling a script of some sort (this requires some special handling - scripts, and batch files cannot be normally elevated....)

Its an updater for a game, that I just read, may not be compatible with Vista. It worked on XP. So there is no way to get a higher level of admin to run this program to see if it will work correctly? If there isn't then I understand.

The only way to know would be to see what that file is really doing - try checking the game's website and seeing if anyone else has tried it - if nothing else, you'll at least see an answer like "It does not support Vista."

ok thanks man

Good luck and keep us posted....