Virtualbox installer does not ask for admin rights (UAC) automatically

[rseiler]

Summary:

Since Virtualbox needs to install drivers, it always needs admin privileges. An installer can be compiled to require this, and many programs that need such privileges are (e.g. Networx, made by SoftPerfect).

Virtualbox is not. If a user has UAC at its default setting (enabled, one notch down from the top), as most people do, then at least in a Vbox upgrade scenario one must remember to run the installer "as admin." If this isn't done, then the installation will still look like it worked, but Virtualbox's system drivers will likely not be installed (if you look at the drivers after the reboot -- e.g. vboxdrv.sys, vboxusb.sys, vboxusbmon.sys, etc -- they will not have been updated).

Proposal:

Virtualbox be made to force elevation upon a normal double click, thereby guaranteeing that this will not be a problem for the forgetful.

Note: I have not provided a log since this problem is one that's visible before setup begins to do anything more than show its initial screen. Also, this isn't specific to any particular version. It's been like this for any version for Windows that I can remember up through the current version.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please provide more information about your setup. Which version of Windows are you using and did you use the official package from the VirtualBox website?

Because it's indeed intended that the VirtualBox installer opens the UAC prompt so I wonder why it didn't work for you when it works here. I just tried this locally (Windows 7 host, UAC default setting): I had an old version of 4.3.x installed and upgraded to 4.3.29. Started the installer as normal user. At some time, the UAC prompt is shown asking for confirmation if I want to install "Oracle VM VirtualBox" on this computer. So from my perspective, everything works as desired. So what's different with your setup?

[rseiler]

Er, I didn't get a notification about a response here, explaining the delay. I just happened to come back after someone else mentioned the issue.

I was and still am testing in Win10 with the latest versions (currently 5.1.x). It puzzles me somewhat that you see (or at least saw) an automatic UAC prompt in Win7 given that it's the absence of a compile-time switch(*) that is causing UAC to be ignored, and we're using the same installer. Perhaps this only matters to Win 8 and up, though I would have expected Vista and up.

*​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=322490#p322490