Why?

Why does [Windows] program X need to run as the administrator? Does it need to access the registry – No. Does it need low level access to a piece of hardware – No. Does it need to write to a special area on the disk – No. So why then for the love of all things do so many Windows programs need to be run as the administrator?

I’m looking in particular at you Sage Accounts and Lloyds Telepay.

Sage Accounts needs to be run as the administrator to ‘Save and Update program options into the registry’, write to a file in the windows\systems32 directory and possibly some other files that I’ve missed. In the UK if you are serious about accounting (or payroll for that matter) then Sage is the product you want. From what I’ve seen and the contact I’ve had with Sage they are not only on the ball, but a pretty decent company. So once again, why do you need to run as administrator? Need to save some settings for all users in the registry, don’t use a protected area of the registry. Need write access to a file, then don’t put it into the systems area on the disk. Better yet, use the users own home directory and registry settings. That’s what it was designed for.

For such a critical package as Sage Accounts it’s just dumb creating all that security within Windows and the network, and the leaving the back door open. Crazy.

The same goes for Lloyds Telepay. On the front it looks a simple program that reads and writes to some flat files, then dials up the bank with payment instructions. And for this you need to run it as the administrator. Where as Sage Accounts will at least run with minimised functionality, Lloyds Telepay actually crashes if you try and run it as a normal user! Not even the so called ‘Power User’ works.

It’s not just limited to these programs either, a quick google brings up plenty of people fighting different software with this same problem (and possible solutions). At the risk of repeating the paragraph above, what is the point of securing the infrastructure and restricting what can happen if we are then forced to run as administrator which ignores all security and access restrictions.

Why?