Why am I being asked for an administrator password when I run a program?
Hi, everyone. Leo, Notenboom here for AskLeo.com.
It's asking you for a password ultimately to keep you
safe.
I know that it may feel like an annoyance, but it's actually a fundamental part
of Windows Security that's basically keeping Malware off your machine.
I'll go into some of the details.
Here's an example of what that dialogue looks like.
You can see here that I've got an example of Windows PowerShell trying to run.
I happen to force this by right clicking
on the Start menu and saying, run Windows PowerShell admin.
Well, admin is kind of the trick here.
It's kind of the telltale the program.
Whatever it is you're attempting to run
requires administrative access to your machine.
Most often, it'd be a set up program or an update program of some sort.
They actually need to legitimately often
install pieces of themselves into otherwise protected areas.
That requires administrative level access.
That's when a feature called User Account Control comes into play.
What User Account Control does is it says,
okay, we're about to do something dangerous, potentially dangerous.
We're about to do something that requires administrative access.
Rather than just doing it, we will prompt the user.
There are two kinds of prompts.
Two styles of prompts.
If you're being asked for a password,
you'll see the dialog that I just showed you?
That is one that is asking you to provide
the password to an administrative enabled account on your machine.
That's to prove that you actually are someone who is allowed to do this.
You are running in what is often called
a limited user account, an account that does not have administrative access.
In order to do anything administrative,
you have to provide some additional credentials.
Your knowledge of an administrator password is one way to do that.
Once you enter the password, then whatever program it is you're
attempting to run will run with administrative privileges.
Now, there's a variation of this dialogue
that a lot of people see, I suspect, a little bit more often.
That doesn't include a password.
It just says yes or no.
That's when your account is administrator
enabled, or as I've referred to it, administrator capable.
Many people get confused because they
think the account they're running with is an administrator account.
It's not.
It's not running with administrator privileges all the time.
It's running with normal privileges,
limited privileges, much like a limited user account would.
The difference is that when
User Account Control comes in, if you have an administrator capable
account, you're simply asked to confirm with yes or no.
You don't have to provide any additional
password by virtue of running an administrator capable account.
It's assumed you know what you're doing.
You have authority to do whatever this is.
So if I've got authority, why is it asking me in the first place?
Why shouldn't it just do it?
Malware, in a nutshell, malware.
Malware would love to install itself on your machine in protected areas.
Malware would love if you were running as administrator all the time,
so it could just wreak havoc on whatever parts of the system it might want to.
You don't want that.
You at least want to be notified.
The classic scenario is if you open an attachment.
If you open an attachment and all of a sudden the UAC dialogue comes up
and says, hey, this requires administrative access.
Are you okay with that?
No, you're not, right?
Opening an attachment like a PDF or
a document or something else should not require administrative access.
That's a red flag.
That's the kind of thing you exactly want UAC to stop or to at least warn you about,
so that you can take a second look at whatever it is you're about to do.
And if you're running with a limited user account and you're not the administrator
of the machine, you shouldn't be allowed to do that.
You shouldn't be allowed to install software.
You shouldn't be allowed to do any
of those things that require administrative access.
If you do, if you have a legitimate need, well, you need to find someone who has
administrative access to that machine, be it your It department or the person
who set up your machine or whatever, but it's protecting that machine
from having things installed on it that shouldn't be most notably malware.
Now, there is one scenario that is problematic, and that's this.
You set up your machine.
You, for whatever reason, are running in a limited user account,
and you don't remember the administrative password.
You have no way of providing
the credentials that are required to do whatever it is you're attempting to do.
There's really no good solution for that.
You can try to reset the Windows administrator password, but my guess is,
especially with later versions of Windows, that may not be possible in reality.
The only way around that problem,
if you find yourself in that situation, is to reinstall Windows.
I hate to say it,
but that's really the only way to solve that particular problem.
Even a refresh won't necessarily do it,
because along the way, it's going to ask for the administrative password.
It's one of those things that is an administrator level function.
So just using the built in functions to reset Windows isn't enough to do it,
because you're not going to be able to get there from here.
You'll need to download and make bootable media, installation media,
and reinstall Windows from scratch, making sure to then
make sure your account has administrative privileges, which it should.
The default account is an administrator capable account.
Don't forget the password.
Set up a couple of backup accounts,
if you like, that also have administrative privileges for which you will remember
the password, and then create an Lua account if you want to.
But the bottom line here is that if you
find yourself cornered with this prompt asking for a password,
and you have no one to turn to and no way to recover a password for it.
You're kind of out of luck.
Something bad has happened, be it having lost access
to an administrative account or forgotten the password or whatever.
And really, the only way to resolve that is to start over.
I know not the news you wanted to hear,
but at least you understand why this really is all about preventing malware
and other unauthorized software from playing on your machine.
For updates, for comments, for related links and more, visit askleo.com/146798.
I'm Leo Notenboom, and this is Askleo.com. Thanks for watching.