Windows 7 - Eclipse now needs me to run as administrator

Question

I installed Eclipse (Kepler) on this W7 64-bit machine and initially I could run it "normally" by just clicking the desktop icon or whatever. Then I replaced the whole "workspace" directory with one from another machine (because I'm changing systems).

Now if I run Eclipse not "as administrator" it opens and will even run apps... but nothing can be saved, including changes to files and updates to the .metadata of any kind.

I changed all the "ownership" and "permissions" which could possibly be involved. I am the only user of this machine, and I am in the administrators group. I CAN still use it, if I run "as an administrator". But I'm stumped why the UAC should have been happy to run Eclipse before without the "as 'strator" but now refuses...

Because... what I've understood about this question is that the UAC looks at apps and decides whether or not they look dodgy and on that basis decides whether you have to run "as 'strator". So what's changed?

I have the option of uninstalling Eclipse and reinstalling it, and then incrementally adding the various project folders... fine, it may work. But I like to understand these things as far as is feasibly possible!

Answer 1

Because... what I've understood about this question is that the UAC looks at apps and decides whether or not they look dodgy and on that basis decides whether you have to run "as 'strator".

UAC doesn't do anything like that. UAC is an ability of Windows to run an application as an administrator. There are three four ways an application can be run as an administrator (causing the UAC consent dialog to appear):

• you right-click the application and select "Run As Administrator"
• the application has been manifested with a requestedExecutionLevel of requireAdministrator
• the application has a filename that looks like a setup application (e.g. setup.exe, install.exe, update.exe), in which case the Shell opts to run it elevated just in case
• you call ShellExecute with the runas verb.

i think there's one of two things happening:

• you missed a spot, in which case you should use Process Monitor to look for Access denied errors

• you tried copying files to a protected location (e.g. Program Files) and they were instead redirected to:

  C:\Users\Mike\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files(x86)\Eclipse
  

And then when you run Eclipse, the files are not there.

Again, use Process Monitor to find where Eclipse is looking for what.