Last Updated on 2015-12-10.
Scenario
Some applications always try to gain administrative permissions on your system, even if they don’t need them. A reason for this might be a lazy or ignorant software developer.
If all of your Windows AD users have local default privileges, it is not an option to upgrade them all to e.g. local administrators just because of a single needed application. Additionally, fewest developers accept such mistakes, so a bugfix could take a long time to be published.
Solution
In some cases, you only have to remove the checkbox “Run as Administrator” from the properties page of the .exe file. Unfortunately, this does not always help.
But you can extend your Windows context menu with an additional entry called “Run without admin permissions”.
Create a .reg file and insert the following text:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\forcerunasinvoker] @="Run without admin rights (UAC)" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\forcerunasinvoker\command] @="cmd /min /C \"set __COMPAT_LAYER=RUNASINVOKER && start \"\" \"%1\"\""
Then run it (as Admin) or import it via regedit.exe.
Afterwards, you will see the entry in your context menu and you can run your application explicitly without admin rights.