CC Apps : The "run as admin" issue has to be seriously (more professionally) worked on

[Samoreen]

Hi,

Many of us are unable to run CC Apps (especially Photoshop, Lightroom and Bridge) unless launched as administrator. This problem is lasting since years but nobody seems to care about it. The usual anwers (checking permissions, re-installing apps, re-installing Windows, creating a new user account, talking about corrupted files or system - that many corrupted data or systems, really ? - etc.) don't help. They are just a loss of time. The error messages emitted by the app about denied access to a folder or a file are stupid enough to not specify which file or which folder. A lot of users have spent hours following the above mentioned advice without any result. Trying to examine the many log files spread by Adobe CC on our disks is just a nightmare.

There's another related problem that also needs to be fixed : Photoshop will not list as possible scratch disk any other drive than C: ... unless run as admin.

I have noticed that similar problems exist on the Mac.

Forcing us to run apps as an admin is a nonsense. So, after all these years, someone at Adobe should take over these problems and work on it seriously :

- We need a tool that would automatically check all the required permissions needed to run CC apps. I really mean ALL because the list of permissions made available by Adobe on various web pages are obviouslyt not enough (and never updated anyway).

- We need more informative error messages. A message saying "You don't have enough rights to access this file" without giving the file's name and path is merely some kind of a provocation. Not professional at all.

- We need that Adobe stop telling us that the problem is on our side. These problems are specific to the CC Apps. There's obviously a bug that doesn't take into account some (legitimate) configurations. I suspect UAC problems on Windows but I'm not sure. There's probably another problem when the TEMP and TMP environment variables folders point to another drive than C: on Windows. When Photoshop fails to recognize any other disk drive than C: as a possible scratch disk when there's no similar problem with any other non Adobe app and when all these drives are recognized by the system, it becomes obvious that this is a PS bug. Fix it ! Or explain us how PS enumerates the disk drives that are candidate for being a scratch disk. Let's be serious : PS doesn't see the drives on my system unless run as admin ? Come on ! It's just a joke.

Adobe should now consider that they are no longer alone on the imaging software market, especially regarding photography. We now have excellent RAW processors (DxO Photolab) and imaging software that is enough powerful for photography (Affinity Photo). Adobe software still have some advantages but I'm really tired spending so much time fixing problems with Adobe Apps and with CC Desktop. The CC Desktop machinery is slow, messy, is spreading a lot of files everywhere on our disks, running a lot of programs and services on which we don't have any control and sending data over the internet even when all sync operations are disabled. Enough is enough. All this stuff should become more simple, cleaner and more user controllable.

So, Adobe, if you don't want to fix these problems, you should at least give us accurate information about the permissions required by your apps and the way you discover drive disks on our system. At least, we could try to adapt our system configurations if needed.

Thank you in advance for handling these problems more seriously.

Patrick

[LinSims]

This is a public forum, not Adobe support. Users, including the Adobe Community Professionals, can't provide support for account, subscription, billing, download, or product activation issues. We also can't make Adobe do anything. Your best option is to provide them feedback here, which is where you can report bugs or request a feature for multiple products:

https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

[Samoreen]

Hi LinSims,

Ahem, you can't imagine the number of wishforms I have filled up during the last 15 years since I have started using Adobe products. Without any effect. I can list bugs that are more than 10 years old and still waiting to be fixed. There's also https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/how-to-user-voice.html which is as good as dead. I tried this already.

Also, we have had a feedback forum (Photoshop Family) where Adobe reps used to participate to the discussions (sometimes). It was closed in 2020, if I remember well. Now, I have been told that Adobe Support Community is the place where I'm supposed to report bugs. That's what I did.

Otherwise, please tell me where are Adobe reps supposed to listen to customer problems and follow discussions about issues reported by multiple users ? By posting here, I'm just hoping that someone at Adobe, curious about what users think about their products, involved in the CC development and still having a minimum of self-esteem and professional conscience would read this, do some research, admit that there's a rather severe issue to solve and report it to whoever is in charge.

Or am I supposed to call the support, report this issue once again and just wait hours to get one the ready-made answers usually returned when this issue is reported (reset your preferences, re-install CC or Windows or PS or Lightroom or whatever, create a new user and try, etc.) ?

Am I paying a subscription to get this kind of service ?

[LinSims]

They told you to come HERE to report bugs? They're not supposed to do that. They know there's nothing we can do, we're not even Adobe employees, and there aren't many employees who participate and none of them have power over this sort of thing. 

I'm sorry, but I don't think you're going to get a different answer.

You could try tweeting Adobe at one of the following (spaces added, you'll need to take them out). Sometimes raising a stink in public is what's needed. 

@ Adobe

@ AdobeCare

@ CreativeCloud

@ Photoshop

Good luck.

[Samoreen]

?!?!?!

So, when someone with the tag "Adobe Employee" next to his/her user id answers a question asked in this forum, should I assume that's a fake ID ?

[Peru Bob]

Occasionally an Adobe employee will post on the forum.

[Samoreen]

Exactly. So, I'm hoping to catch the attention of someone who could/should be interested in these problems.

[LinSims]

"Not many"  ≠  "Not any"

[Nancy OShea]

Is this a Teams/Enterprise Plan or an Individual Plan?

On my Windows 10 workstation, I have no problems running apps as Administrator. That's the default setting on my computer's user profile. 

In rare cases, I may need to right-click on a program icon and select More > Run as Administrator but that's usually because of a Windows OS update and nothing Adobe or Creative Cloud has done.

[Samoreen]

Hi Nancy,

This is an individual plan. But I guess that the code of these apps when subscribing to an Enterprise plan is the same ?

PS, LR and Bridge are running fine when launched as an admin. That's not the problem. The problem is that I do have to run them as admin. Otherwise they crash (LR) or don't even start (PS). By the way, this shouldn't even happen. When a program is started, the code should check whether all the conditions required for it to run safely are met. If not, it should emit informative error messages and terminates. Merely crashing or freezing is the sign of bad programming practice.

I shouldn't have to run CC apps as an admin when it's not necessary, especially when using a standard account. It's a security issue.  Officially, PS, LR and Bridge don't require to be run as an admin and they shouldn't anyway. Only their installation requires this. So, there's something going wrong that must be fixed. If a plugin or a script misbehaves, the consequences can be much more severe if the app is running as an admin. I don't have any other app that requires to be run as an admin. The support team at Adobe seems to consider that running the CC apps as an admin is a solution. It's not. This is an unsafe temporary workaround. It's time that this issue be considered as a bug.

If Adobe could only give us accurate and complete information about what permissions are actually necessary and if they could explain how they enumerate the disk drives available on the system, I could investigate the problem more deeply. I'm a former software engineer and a former Microsoft Development MVP. So, I can understand technical explanations about this. I have tried to use debugging tools like SysInternals' Process Monitor in order to track what's happening when these apps starts but it's really not easy. Too much data to sort out. Having the information requested above could help a lot.

Given the number of users having these problems, this cannot be a file corruption or hardware problem. This is a bug that may or may not appear depending on the system configuration.

[Nancy OShea]

If your computer's operating system can't freely read/write & edit files on your system, the apps can't work properly. 

What you describe sounds like a permission's problem at the OS level.  What's causing it is anybody's guess. 

• Security settings in your firewall or anti-virus software. 
• A bad computer user profile. 
• A failing hard drive.
• An aggressive malware attack (virus or self-replicating trojan). 

Have your computer checked by a service technician who can run proper diagnostics and if needed, reformat or replace your hard drive.

[Samoreen]

Nancy,

> If your computer's operating system can't freely read/write & edit files on your system, the apps can't work properly. 

Thank you, but please :--))) !

Be sure, that I wouldn't have dared to post the initial message of this thread if I had not checked before all the points that you have listed. As I mentioned above, I'm a former system engineer, sofware engineer and Microsoft MVP. So, I'm supposed to understand all this stuff correctly. All the permissions have been checked, I have tried creating another profile, I have checked the system, the disk drives and the hardware in general by the mean of tools you don't even think of. Believe me, I have tried everything I could think of. My system is clean, properly and meticulously maintained and updates and I don't have any problem running all the many apps that are installed on it. And there are many users having the same problem and who also spent a lot of time doing the same verifications.

The only thing that I couldn't check is the source code of PS, LR and Bridge.

Of course, there's allegedly a "permission problem" since everything works fine when the apps are launched as an admin. But since the permissions are obviously OK, I think that PS, LR and Bridge have a problem (with NTFS ?) when evaluating these permissions. This leads me to think that these apps have a common issue due to a code module that they are all sharing. Adobe CC is installing so many pieces of code on a system. You can't tell what code calls or loads what module. This makes spotting bugs very hard, even for those who are supposed to maintain this code.

Also, all the drives on my system can be accessed by any app in read/write mode even without needing to be run as an admin. Only PS can't recognize (list) any other drive as c: when selecting the scratch disks (I check this just before it crashes by using the Alt+Ctrl combo when not launching it as an admin; only c: is listed). What could explain that these drives are recognized and listed when PS runs as an admin and not when running normally ? This doesn't make sense. This is not a problem related to the available disk space : all these NTFS drives have a lot of free space and give read/write permissions to any authenticated user.

The usual problem with this kind of bug is that they are not appearing on every system. So, it's tempting to conclude that the problem is on the user's side. You can be sure that it is not the case.

[Nancy OShea]

I am neither an Adobe employee nor software engineer.   But based on my considerable particpation in these user-to-user forums, "running as administrator" is not a frequently asked question here.  In fact, you're the only person I've seen who has repeated problems with it. 

If this was a widespread issue as you claim, we would see many more posts like yours.  But we're not.  It's safe to assume that something is different on your end.

You say you only have problems with Photoshop, Lightroom and Bridge.

Where do you store your photos?  Are they on your computer's primary hard drive?

Can you run the apps in Safe Mode?

[Samoreen]

In fact, you're the only person I've seen who has repeated problems with it. 

Seriously ? Are you kidding me ? The first reports about the "run as administrator" issue were about PS CS5, if I remember well. Just google a little and you'll see that many people can't run PS (and less frequently LR or Bridge) unless launched as an administrator. This is not my problem, this is a well-known issue laaasting since years.

You say you only have problems with Photoshop, Lightroom and Bridge.

Where do you store your photos?  Are they on your computer's primary hard drive?

Can you run the apps in Safe Mode?

The location of my photos has nothing to do with this problem. They are stored on a data dedicated drive to which any authenticated user and any app have read/write access, as already mentioned. The problem is being able to run the app. Once it is running (as an admin) I can access and write images everywhere I want.

Trying to run in Safe Mode doesn't help. If you are thinking that some plugin is involved, you're on the wrong track. Because I already tried to uninstall any plugin in PS and because no plugin could be causing this issue in PS, LR and Bridge.