Synopsis

This article explains how to install an installation package on a target machine regardless of user privileges.

Discussion

The following methods can be used to enable a non-administrator to install an applictaion with elevated system privileges.

To Enable Via User Access Control (Vista and Later)

A member of the Administrators group can provide authorization for a non-administrator to elevate through User Access Control which is described in Using Windows Installer with UAC.

To Enable by System Policy

1. On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
2. In the console tree, right-click the domain or organizational unit for which you want to set the policy.
3. Click Properties, and then click the Group Policy tab.
4. Select a Group Policy Object in the Group Policy Objects Links box and click Edit.
5. Open the Local Computer Policy\Administrative Templates\Windows Installer folder.
6. In the details pane, double-click the Always install with elevated privileges policy.
7. In the Group Policy Property dialog box, enable the policy, select the check box to turn the setting on, and then click OK.
8. Open the User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Installer folder and repeat Steps 6 and 7.

Under Windows NT 4.0, you can use the System Policy Editor and Windows Installer policy template file (Instlr11.adm) to set the Always install with elevated privileges policy. You must set the policy for the computer and for each user. For more information about setting system policies in Office XP, see Understanding System Policies.

If you choose not to use the Group Policy Editor or the System Policy Editor, you can specify the same setting on each computer by changing a value in the Windows registry.

To Enable Elevated Privileges in the Windows Registry

1. On the Start menu, click Run and type regedit to open the Registry Editor.
2. Find or add the following subkey in the Windows registry:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer
3. In the Installer subkey, insert AlwaysInstallElevated as a REG_DWORD and its value to 1.
4. Find or add the following subkey in the Windows registry:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer
5. In the Installer subkey, insert AlwaysInstallElevated as a REG_DWORD and its value to 1.
6. Repeat Steps 5 and 6 for each user of the computer.

Additional Information

With the release of Windows Server 2003 SP1 it has been reported that in some cases setting AlwaysInstallElevated was not sufficient. In this environment, the DisableMSI setting might also need to be set to 0.

For more information, see the following MSDN Library articles

• AlwaysInstallElevated
• DisableMSI
• Always install with elevated privileges
• Installing a Package with Elevated Privileges for a Non-Admin